


ego-dystonic/a declaration

by shaekspeares



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Character Study, Child Neglect, Class Issues, Coming of Age, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Growing Up, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, One Shot, Period Typical Attitudes, Pining, Small Towns, bisexuals, just touches on canonical elements of hyde's life, this isn't an angstploitation story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24162982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaekspeares/pseuds/shaekspeares
Summary: [reupload]Living with the Formans is a nightmare and a daydream. He feels like he’s climbed into the TV set and joined the Brady Bunch.“So, how is it?” Fez inquires, from his perch on the sofa, one week into their new cohabitation. Behind Kelso Jackie perks up, interested, and Steven looks away, shrugs.“Crazy, man. I’m a sell-out.”“Oh, really, Hyde,” Donna says, with a flick of her hair. “Would it kill you to sound a little grateful?”“Quite possibly, yeah.”“At least you have a room and stuff now,” Jackie says, in that condescendingly benign tone of hers. “And you’re probably way less diseased.”“Gee, thanks, Jackie,” Steven says. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”(or: Hyde, the secrets he keeps, and the people he loves.)
Relationships: Eric Forman/Steven Hyde, Jackie Burkhart & Steven Hyde, Kitty Forman & Steven Hyde, Potential Steven Hyde/Eric Forman/Donna Pinciotti, Steven Hyde & Buddy Morgan, Steven Hyde/Donna Pinciotti, This isn't really a ship fic but Eric and Steven get the most focus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	ego-dystonic/a declaration

**Author's Note:**

> [reuploaded cause this got nerfed by ao3, v sad to have lost the v thoughtful comms i got :(]
> 
> prompt was to do sort of a character piece for hyde; i thought the best way of doing that was just kind of running with the vibes he gave me and contextualising them in the 70s. i'm sad i didn't manage to get any hyde/jackie in here but so much of what i wanted to write was really about hyde's relationship with the formans (and all that they represent) so there wasn't really the space to focus elsewhere. hyde really does not talk about his inner thoughts much so this was a challenge to write, but i hope it does a fair job at depicting a possible interpretation of his character- it's a little more broody than he tends to be, but i think that's probably how he is in private. he seems like the type to keep a lot of his thoughts to himself, and he has had a ridiculously shitty upbringing, so.
> 
> i had the MOST fun writing all of the different character interactions, especially those with buddy morgan. i think buddy is kind of to blame for the direction in which this fic went- hyde's hatred of him is just so random it got me thinking about what he might resent about him.
> 
> title refers to the classification of homosexuality in the DSM by the 1970s; activism had originally gotten it removed by the early 70s but the APA essentially put it back into DSM III under a different name (hence ego-dystonic), and activists like frank kameny fiercely criticised the Association for it (prompting the titular declaration of war). it makes for an interesting read; time has a good article about it.

It’s not the type of thing you can admit, but one of Steven’s earliest memories is of Kitty Forman.

He’s not entirely sure why. It’s not like he doesn’t have older memories- meeting Eric, for one, or Donna- but it’s one of the most vivid. He can still remember her entire ensemble. 

Kitty Forman is a mother. Steven’s mother is his mother, but she isn’t a mother; Kitty Forman is a mother, and he is aware of this from the first time he lays eyes on her, small and neat and holding Forman- Eric-’s little stupid lunchbag in her sensibly manicured hands. 

They’re maybe five or six; Steven can’t quite recall. Everything until primary school is a blur in his memory, so lacking in structure that he can’t quite keep his timeline straight. All he remembers of the pre-Forman days are a revolving door of strange men, sporadic bursts of niceness from his mother, the smell of her perfume, the red of her nails. She was nicer then, he thinks, or else he was dumber, but probably she was nicer- people are nicer to little kids, on account of their being cuter and all. 

He’d never tell Forman a bit of this. He never tells Forman about three quarters of the shit he thinks about him. It’d do his pretty little suburban head in, and Steven doesn’t want that for him- he’s not really all that mean, regardless of what the others say.

Still- it’s probably humiliating, on some deep level that he’s glad no one will ever get the chance to examine, that he recalls those early days so clearly. Meeting Forman, meeting Donna. Maybe more significantly, meeting _the_ Formans. 

Eric, Steven’s age, but half his size, eyes like saucers, the silliest and neatest haircut Steven’s ever seen, and a wobbly unsure smile like he’s not entirely sure what to make of Steven but he’s been raised polite; Eric tailed by Donna, solidly Steven’s height, red-haired and tough; Eric with the mom and the dad and the sister. When he meets Eric he knows instinctively that Eric is the right sort of kid where Stephen is not, and when he meets Eric’s family, he feels like his worldview has shifted entirely. He’s gone most of his life thinking the world was made of rundown rental apartments with no heating and broken blinds and empty fridges and strange, withdrawn mothers, where suburbia is yet another fantastical made-for-TV fiction with about as much grounding in reality as Star Trek. Then there is Eric, and he has a stern father and a soft mother and a mean sister, and Steven thinks maybe not, and maybe his world is actually just wrong, and maybe his mother is actually just not a good mother. 

Kitty Forman rattles him. Red is different- Steven has only ever had Bud as a father, but Edna’d always been very clear that Bud was only a step-father, and in his head that had been an important distinction; no real father. He has a real mother, though, and she’d been easy enough to compare to Kitty. 

She hadn’t held up well. 

Kitty Forman calls him Steven, and sweetheart, and dear, and a myriad other things he’s only ever heard his mother call her guys, and even then rarely sincerely. Steven stares at her blankly and watches her smile falter, then return full-force. He wonders if she’s like that all the time, or only outside. Edna can be different outside, sometimes. 

Back then Eric is still unabashed about loving his parents, especially Kitty. He hugs her around the waist, buries his head in her stomach, and when he falls and scrapes his knee he bawls until she kisses it. Steven, unfazed by the scrape, feels a little winded witnessing it, feels a horrible hollow feeling in the depths of his stomach that he’s never felt so vividly before. He thinks maybe Kitty is like that behind closed doors too, after all, or Eric wouldn’t be so sure her kisses can fix his injuries. 

Steven doesn’t think kisses can fix injuries, but he’s not sure. Maybe it’s just a thing that works for kids like Eric, or maybe it’s the kind of thing only moms like Kitty know to do. One time she catches him staring after a scuffle, about a year into his and Eric’s newfound friendship, and tuts when she spots his bleeding forehead, beckons him closer. He’s still wary of her, but he knows by then that she’s not out to hurt him or anything, so he approaches, glancing at a sniffling Eric, stands stock-still within arms’ reach.

“Oh, Steven!” Kitty exclaims, and frowns at both of them. “You’ve hit your head! Honestly, you two.”

“Sorry, mom,” Eric says, not so wobbly now, because he’s already been given a plaster with little dinosaurs, and Steven inclines his head apologetically, well-accustomed to admonishment. 

“Here you are,” Kitty hushes, wiping Steven’s forehead with her tissue, and it stings a little, but hardly enough for him to wince, especially with Eric watching. Eric thinks Steven is very cool, and Steven would like to keep things that way. “All better.”

She kisses his forehead; Steven balks. 

The funny thing is that he can’t remember meeting Eric exactly. He remembers the feeling of meeting him- the early days- and he remembers meeting each of his parents, but he can’t remember exactly when and where they first laid eyes upon each other. He can’t remember why they became friends, either. 

They went to school together, him and Eric and Donna; he got lucky with the schools, lived just on the border of the school district so that he got to attend the nicer school, with the nice kids from the other side of the town. Kindergarten onwards. He’d missed pre-K; Edna’d never sent him, for lack of funds maybe. She’d been keen on school, though, probably because it kept him out of the house all day. So- school, and Eric and Donna.

He’s no good at school, ever, especially not at first, where it’s all rules and adult supervision and it makes him on edge and a little claustrophobic, not to mention that he finds reading and maths hard and they think he’s stupid. He’s not; he’s just never been taught anything like that. He knows how to make sandwiches and go to the store and put himself to bed; Bud’s shown him how to do stuff with cars. None of the other six year olds can do that. But he can’t read at first, and he hates feeling stupid, hates the way they look at him, hates that he can tell this is wrong somehow. 

Eric sits next to him. This much he remembers. Eric sits next to him a bunch, and one day he offers him his apple juice or something, and Steven takes it because he has no manners, but Eric doesn’t seem to mind, only tells him a little about his GI Joe collection, and Steven doesn’t interrupt him because he doesn’t have much by way of toys and he’s intrigued. 

“Laurie keeps stealing them to play with her Barbies though,” Eric complains, and puffs his kid-fat cheeks up, pink with offence, fists curling. “And then she messes ‘em up.”

“Who’s Laurie?”

“My sister. She’s older than me. And she’s really mean.”

Laurie is blonde, blonder than Eric, and pretty, Steven suspects, and also nasty and dumb. This makes him like Eric better. He thinks he trusts him more now that he knows there are people who hurt him. 

Eric, then, as always, is a package deal; Eric-and-Donna. Neighbours, Steven is informed. Donna is also pretty, red-haired and narrow-eyed, and she can take him in a fight. Eric can’t. Eric just cries a lot, the time Steven shoves him over to see how he’ll react. Then Donna hits him. It stings pretty bad. 

“Donna’s my best friend,” Eric informs him, later, when they’re sat on a wall observing a worm together. Donna nods seriously. “Because she lives next door.”

“Do you have a best friend?” Donna asks, curiously. They’re both curious, all the time, about Steven, about his house. Maybe because they know each other’s so well. 

“No,” Steven says. He doesn’t even think he has friends at all. He plays soccer with some kids in the street sometimes, and he thinks for a while when he was four he used to watch TV at some lady’s place a lot. But he’s never had a friend like Donna and Eric are friends. 

“Oh,” Donna says. “Why not?”

“I don’t want one,” Steven says, because telling the truth feels like the wrong move. “I do things by myself.”

“That’s dumb,” Eric decides, and then climbs off the wall. Donna follows. 

Steven follows too, only a little slower.

They’re friends from then on; best friends too, if you’d ask Eric, but Steven’s more realistic. By his accounts this whole schmaltzy life-long thing only cements itself later, when they’re ten or so. Before that they’d only really been friends by circumstance. 

It happens at school, like most things do at that age. Him and Donna, walking out of History, and Eric, eternally smaller than most people their year, with his back flat against his locker, shock more than fear in his expression as two kids Steven just about knows by name hover over him ominously. 

Donna is already raring to go; he considers just watching, doesn’t. Instead he looks at them, thinks about the way he wants middle school to go, decides that Eric and Donna are much lamer but also probably much nicer than any alternative he has, and he guesses that’s the kind of thing he cares about now. 

“What do you two want?”

“Hyde,” Paul Neuberger greets, twelve and held back twice already. He’s holding Eric up by the straps of his dumb He-Man backpack, no doubt the incentive for the confrontation. “We’re just riling Forman cause he’s a little sissy. Right, Forman?”

Eric’s backpack is the stupidest thing he’s ever laid eyes on, but Eric is Steven’s to insult, he feels. Maybe this is why Donna never lets him pick on Eric too much. It’s an eye-opening realisation; he feels it surge through him as he sets his jaw. 

“Leave him alone.”

“Or what?” Ethan calls, designated sidekick that he is. Eric squirms against the locker; Paul’s twisting his arm.

“I mean it.”

“Back off, Hyde,” Paul snaps, cheeks colouring irritably. “Just cause you’re used to getting your butt kicked doesn’t mean you can fight both of us alone.”

Steven considers it, then inhales, with the surge of adrenaline he will later become so familiar with. “I’m not alone, dumbass.”

Then he punches Paul in the face. 

Later, once he and Donna have been soundly told off for fighting, they sit side by side outside the nurse’s office, lollipops in hand. Neither of them needed much patching up. Paul hadn’t expected his first blow, and he’d fallen over quickly enough that Steven could just throw himself on him; Ethan had been too gobsmacked by Donna’s interference to put up much of a fight, and by that point she’d already scratched him across the eyes and kneed him. 

“Thanks for helping,” Donna says, fiddling with her plaster. Steven has an icepack against his cheek to soften the sting, with would probably help more if he wasn’t obstinately sucking on the lollipop anyways. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

“It was cool of you,” Donna continues. “Eric’s not that dumb but he’s a wuss.”

“I know,” Steven says. He wonders if she’s forgotten that she used to be the one to wrestle him into the sandpit- that she still does when he pisses her off. Her two neat braids have barely been mussed up by the fight. 

He’s contemplating his lollipop situation when Donna leans in to kiss him on his ice-pack free cheek, quick and hard, and he chokes on the lollipop. 

Incidentally, he thinks the fight is when Red started taking a liking to him, either for standing up for Eric or for being man enough to fight where Eric wasn’t. It’s probably unfair to enjoy Eric’s dad’s disappointment in his son so much, but basking in the approval is too nice to miss out on, so he doesn’t really care. Red remains wary of him afterwards, of course, because he’s from the wrong side of the tracks, or because Edna’s a hooker, or because according to all adults Steven always had a shifty look about him, even as a kid, but he’s decent to him regardless, and sometimes Steven sort of believes Eric when he insists the wariness is all an act. 

What had actually flustered him, though, was that Kitty hadn’t seemed surprised.

Middle school onwards is when the basement really becomes the place to be. As kids they don’t mind just playing in Eric’s room, or Donna’s, even; never Steven’s, of course, because it’s so far, and also because he always finds a way to keep them out of his house. Half of the time they’re outside. But in middle school they start wanting privacy, and also to watch TV away from the adults, and Donna’s parents start getting weird about two boys hanging around her room all the time, so they relocate to the basement. That’s when Kelso starts hanging around them, too, because at some point Steven and Donna’s various annoyances with him kind of gave up in the face of his indefeasible good cheer and he stopped being only Eric’s big dumb friend. Three never quite becomes four, but Kelso never leaves; they need more space to coexist. 

The basement is a weird place. In a lot of ways it’s like a mausoleum to childhood. When Steven moves in it feels surreal to live in, like he’s permanently shifting through preserved memories of some night or another spent jacking around in it, a myriad little Erics and Donnas and Stevens milling about. 

Middle school is when Eric develops his first crush on Donna. Middle school is when Steven gets his first girlfriend, then his second. Middle school is when they start discussing sex in hushed voices, giddy with secrecy and half-repulsed. 

They grow into their own features. He always sort of thinks all kids look the same- pint-sized, big eyes, malleable little faces. In middle school you can start telling them apart. Donna is taller than all of them, fiery-haired and fierce; Steven’s hair curls fiercer than ever, and he goes lanky, thick-browed; Eric is last to hit puberty. 

Edna gets a job at some food place, and they get a TV. She sees some guy for a while- Stuart- who has a nice car and drives him to school sometimes, and it’s almost worth the fact that he throws Edna around when they’re pissed. Steven moves himself into the upstairs bedroom even if it’s smaller and smells weird, because it has a lock on the door. 

“Your mom is so cool,” Kelso tells him, over lunch. Kelso is already Kelso in middle school; Steven is still Steven to Donna and Eric, but not to anyone else. “She lets you do so much fun stuff on your own.”

“I guess,” Steven says. “Bet Eric’d hate it. Not having his mommy baby him.”

“Hey, shut up!” Eric protests, colouring anyways. “She doesn’t baby me.”

“She leaves you notes in your lunchbox,” Steven grins. “ _Hugs and kisses, mommy wuvs you._ ”

Kelso roars with laughter, easily entertained; Donna rolls her eyes. She’s taken up the habit. Steven intends on stealing it from her. 

“Whatever,” Eric mutters, mutinous. “See if I let you come watch Charlie’s Angels at my place tonight.”

If he was serious Steven might worry, because Charlie’s Angels is the closest thing they have to adult TV, but Eric just likes to complain. When he gets really, seriously angry, you can tell. So he just shrugs, steals a chip. 

“Sure. Then I guess I won’t show you guys the dirty magazine I have.”

“No way,” Kelso exclaims, eyes gone big. “You found one?”

“Not so loud,” Eric hisses, but he’s interested now. “I bet you’re lying. Where’d you find something like that?”

“I have my ways,” Steven shrugs. He doesn’t want to make the obvious connection to Edna. It’s sort of an open secret, and he’s the only one in their group that has started to grasp the implications, the reason why all of his friends’ parents are so mortified about it. 

“That’s disgusting,” Donna opines, glaring at him. “I’m not coming over if you’re going to be drooling over that kind of stuff.”

“You’re not even a little curious?”

“Why would I be? I’m a girl,” Donna huffs, though her ears go red. “I know what I look like without clothes on.”

This makes both Eric and Kelso go red; Steven just about manages to keep his cool. “I can tell you now- you look nothing like _these_ girls.”

She punches him in the gut. 

They all still get together to look, though.

Middle school isn’t so bad, all in all. Childhood didn’t have much going for it, beyond maybe that Edna used to hug him a lot; primary was OK, but he hadn’t been so good at knowing what to say and do for people not to notice how off he was; he’s mostly perfected that by middle school. Middle school has him, and Eric, and Donna, and Kelso; middle school has his mom with a steady job, and his first kisses, and his first beer, and his first cigarette. It’s mostly an uncomplicated time. 

The summer after seventh grade Red starts trying to get Eric more into cars, and for weeks they spend all of their time in the garage. One day Red lets Steven try his hand at changing a tire, and he’s much better at it than Eric, who sits back and lets him do it, happy not to have to do the dirty work. He gets a “not bad, son” for his efforts, and likes Red a whole lot more afterwards, which embarrasses him to remember. 

Kitty fusses over them a little less by then, maybe because they’re around less, or maybe because she’s used to them by now. She still smells the same, looks the same; she brings snacks downstairs a lot. Steven always scarfs the food down, and the others complain and whine, but Kitty never reprimands him, which is a little weird because she’d tell Eric off for doing the same. He doesn’t like to think about it because he doesn’t want it to be pity and he suspects it might be.

Edna never knows about his girlfriends, in middle school or otherwise, but Kitty Forman does, if only because Eric tells her, and she asks after them, just like she asks after his results, sometimes, or his extracurriculars. Each time Steven just blinks at her in latent surprise- usually the girlfriends are old news by then- but it’s an odd feeling, having his school life so known by an adult, and he tells Eric to stop spilling his secrets to his mother. He doesn’t think Eric listens.

Middle school’s not all good, obviously. He’s figured out by then that the older you get the shittier the world seems. It’s during that time of his life that he tries his hardest to know about his father, fight after fight leading him no closer to an answer, weathering Edna’s hysterical moods. It culminates when he has to break into the house through the window after Edna leaves for a week and forgets to give him the key, January of eighth grade, and he nearly catches his death because the heat’s been turned off and he can’t close up the window well enough to keep the wind out.

It’s also during these years of his life that he starts to understand things he’d probably have been better off never understanding, starting with the way he sees his friends.

Him and Donna have a funny thing. They’re friends because of Eric, but they’re really a lot more alike than either of them are with Eric, and sometimes he thinks maybe she sort of likes him a bit, when he’s acting all tough and stuff. He thinks he might be a little in love with her, and also that he might have felt this way since the day they first met and he watched her make two kids cry. It’s an unfortunate reality, and confusing, because sometimes he kind of feels like she’s his sister, and other days he wants to kiss her and see her without her clothes and stuff. She kisses him a handful of times across the years, but it’s always in the heat of the moment, and barely there, nothing he’d be able to put a name to. She kisses Eric about the same, so it’s not like he's special. The only difference is that no one ever knows about it when she kisses Steven; they’re good at keeping things quiet where Eric can’t lie to save his life. 

Secretly, he thinks Donna is the type of girl he likes even more than he likes the girls in the magazines, because she’s increasingly pretty but she’s also cool, in her own slightly prissy way. She’s tough as nails, for one; he’s almost never seen her cry. And she’s smart, too, and never backs out of a fight, but she can be really nice if she wants to be. She’s not much of a girl. 

Eric’s not much of a guy, on the other hand. He’s not exactly a sissy, because he likes guy stuff and he’s got a mouth on him, but he cries easily, even in middle school, and he’s not much good at sports, and he doesn’t like to get in trouble or upset his parents even if he does anyways. Plus he’s scared of his sister, and of Donna, and even if that’s understandable it’s the sort of thing guys should know not to be too obvious about, part of the unspoken social cues that comprise masculinity. Eric seems to have missed a lot of these cues. 

The missed cue he takes most personally is that Eric is sort of pretty, in a weird way; he and Laurie don’t look so different face-wise. This is a thought he knows never to voice, even aged eleven, and shoves down so fiercely he tends to forget it, though it rears its head at times when someone else is dumb enough to notice. Years later Fez will guilelessly point out that Eric and Laurie have the same eyes, and Steven will say absolutely nothing and feel somehow vindicated anyways. Unlike Eric, he knows the cues very well- knows not to name the cloudy confusion that fills his chest when he starts thinking that Eric is too girly a boy and Donna too boyish a girl and sometimes he thinks- he feels- he doesn’t know, but he knows the confusion is the kind of unnamed wrong he can’t tell anyone about. 

It’s not quite the hazy heat he manages to coin as S-E-X by middle school, but it could be its distant cousin. It’s the kind of swooping discomfort he feels when one of the guys his mom sees between rebounds with Stuart catches him prowling the kitchen one morning in his ratty t-shirt and gives him an odd, slow smile that makes him uncharacteristically stuttery. The guy has a motorbike, and he drops Steven off at Eric’s once, and the roiling feeling in his stomach as he sits between the guy’s thighs with his gaze fixed on the highway is enough that he refuses to get any lifts from him again, even at the expense of not making the most of the cool points he might have gotten for getting to school that way. 

The confusion is rough, though. It’s at its most potent at that time because he’s too dumb to understand where it comes from. On one occasion he watches Donna and Eric wrestle in the pool and he grips one of Mrs Forman’s glasses so hard it breaks. It’s a bit like that with Kelso, too, because Kelso is tall and boyish but he also has dumb girly lips and long eyelashes, and Steven just feels like the world would be a much better place if it followed its own rules and made sure only girls got to be pretty. 

He never really has a moment where he wakes up and just knows what’s wrong with him. It comes through repetition, a product of his walks home through the foul-mouthed streets. He’s never been one to flinch at swearing, having heard the whole selection from his mother if nowhere else; insults glide off him like water off a duck’s back, to the frustration of many a fledgling bully. There are ones he finds harder not to scowl at, predictably Freudian, but then he doesn’t think it’s particularly easy being the literal son of a whore, considering. By middle school he’s managed to keep his colour down when they’re flung his way, but there’s a hollow, furious burn in his chest that he never manages to shake off. That’s how he knows, in the end- catches onto a new variety of insults thrown at a specific type of guy, and when one unthinkingly gets thrown his way Steven feels that familiar ugly burning inside and thinks _fuck_. 

People assume otherwise, but if there’s one thing he’s good at it’s keeping out of trouble. The type of trouble he gets in is only trouble to the Formans of the world, petty. None of them would last a day with the kind of trouble he escapes on the daily. So when he has this godawful moment of truth, he does the smart thing: nothing. 

It’s not like he has nothing better to do than reflect on that particular nightmare. Middle school also introduces his iconic sunglasses, and to-date Steven thinks that’s his most impressive con: to have had the genius to chalk those up to some kind of precocious anti-establishment agenda when he’d only needed them to cover up his bruises. The sunglasses are a pretty good symbol, really, the bittersweetness of that time. Stuart is like that himself - friendly on some days, driving his red Corvette, and a steady supplier of things Steven can tout around school (a porno, a beer, his old leather jacket), but also the source of Steven’s irrational phobia of unlocked doors and his penchant for long sleeves and eye-wear.

Not a single teacher bats an eye. They’ve had him pinned for years- his second grade school report had called him ‘destined to be the smartest man in his cell block’. Despite their later spat on the subject, it doesn’t matter that the impetus for this damning edict was the destruction of Christine Del Bueno’s diorama, wrongfully attributed to him- they’d been only too willing to cast him in the guilty role because they’d already figured he was trouble, and that impression stuck. Eric Forman is a nice boy, Steven Hyde is not. This is gospel truth. If Eric Forman rocked up to school in sunglasses… 

(He does avoid Kitty at first, though. A little. He tells himself it’s in case she asks questions, but a small part of him tells him it’s because he’s scared she won’t.)

Stuart is gone by the summer before high school, and Steven drinks a lot of his leftover beer and feels furiously numb about it, wonders what kind of pussy it makes him that he kind of wants to cry because some bum who beat them has decided to fuck off just like every other boyfriend Edna’s ever had. 

High school cements all of their dynamics. High school is for the most part comprised of the basement- the four of them on the couches, in front of the TV, drinking stolen beer, exchanging stolen stories, and then Jackie, and then Fez, both Kelso’s unwanted additions to the group. School, too, but Steven never tries in school, despite the fact he’s always been clever; he barely attends half of his classes and always manages a passing grade. 

Things change, and don’t. Donna is still tall and red-haired and fierce, though visibly a girl, now; Eric is still the shortest in their group, doe-eyed, but lanky now, and more sarcastic than ever. Kelso is still the pretty airhead, and Steven is still Steven, though rebranded as Hyde- sardonic, cynical, causing mischief. Somehow he remains naive enough to honestly believe high school will end the way it started, the status quo intact, each of them off on their predestined paths. 

(At risk of spoiling the surprise: it does not.)

Sometimes he thinks Edna is the catalyst of the whole mess. Not just the mess that is his factual existence, but the mess that defines his adulthood, starting with their last year of high school. If Edna had only held her shit together just a handful of months longer, Steven’d never have moved in with the Formans, and if he’d never moved in with the Formans, hell- his life would be very fucking different. 

He doesn’t believe it, at first, is the sad thing. He really doesn’t. All of the others think he was living in denial, but in those first days, weeks, he expects her back. Even once he’s moved in he half-expects her to rock up at some point, new man in tow, to drag him back where he belongs. Maybe it’s sentimental, he doesn’t know. It’s just that for all that Edna is a feckless, neglectful, verbally abusive alcoholic, she’s always been pretty consistent in the long run; he’s never genuinely bought that she’d just abandon him completely. Stupid.

It hits him while he’s crawling through her wardrobe looking for one of her hidden stashes of money, one night, out of the blue, and he stays frozen there for what feels like an hour, reality sinking in, his fingers twitching, his heart like lead. He doesn’t cry, he thinks, because he hasn’t cried since he hit puberty, but he wishes he had, because sitting there in dead silence shivering unhappily is worse. 

He doesn’t expect the Formans to take him in, despite everything. Then he doesn’t expect them to let him stay. And it’s harder on him than he thought, because damn it all to hell, they live a _good life_. He hates that he thinks it, because then he has to acknowledge that he has always thought it, and that he has always lusted after it, the two parents and the picket fence and the basketball hoop, that he has spent year after year pining not just after Eric and Donna but their entire lives, that he has spent countless empty nights lying on a dingy mattress with no food in his stomach trying not to hate his best friends for having a life worth living. He has always made it sound like a choice, like he’s against the system, disinterested in the lame conformity of their lifestyles, but living with the Formans forces him to recognise that has never been about any of that, and that given the choice he will _grovel_ if it’ll make the system keep him. 

Living with the Formans is a nightmare and a daydream. They have heating, all the time, and electricity, and running water, and there’s always food, and Kitty cooks- and Kitty asks things, and listens, and chatters, and is permanently _there_ , a fixture of the household, and she knows who Steven is and she still likes having him around. He’s a massive, blood-sucking burden on their straining household and not one of them acts like they’re aware of it. Forman barely registers the change- acts like Hyde’s just popping up from a day in the basement, half the time, like he hasn’t just changed Steven’s entire world with a bat of his eyelashes in his parent’s direction. It’s like another plane of existence. He feels like he’s climbed into the TV set and joined the Brady Bunch. 

“So, how is it?” Fez inquires, from his perch on the sofa, one week into their new cohabitation. Behind Kelso Jackie perks up, interested, and Steven looks away, shrugs. 

“Crazy, man. I’m a sell-out.”

“Oh, really, Hyde,” Donna says, with a flick of her hair. “Would it kill you to sound a little grateful?”

“Quite possibly, yeah.”

“At least you have a room and stuff now,” Jackie says, in that condescendingly benign tone of hers. “And you’re probably way less diseased.”

“Gee, thanks, Jackie,” Steven says. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

Jackie beams at him, and Steven wonders not for the last time just how much of Jackie’s demeanour comes from complete ignorance and how much comes from not giving a single fuck about anyone’s opinion but her own. He can’t stray too much towards the latter or else he starts begrudgingly respecting her.

Eric does ask, though, maybe a couple of days later, abruptly serious as they lie almost side by side in Eric’s room, Steven’s cot stretched out under the window. 

“Hyde?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re- I mean, you’re happy here, right?”

“I’d be happier if you let me sleep.”

“Hyde, I’m serious.”

“I know you are, Forman.” 

“So?”

He groans, shifts, stares up at the ceiling. Sometimes he wishes he had the privilege of admitting even half the things he thinks about in the privacy of his own head. 

“Yeah, man. Your folks are all right.”

“Yeah,” Eric echoes, sounding reassured; he shifts, maybe facing towards him. “I’m- I’m really sorry about your mom, you know.”

He doesn’t expect to stiffen so hard. It’s just that no one’s really gone out and said it like that, and he didn’t expect it from Eric, maybe stupidly. It takes him a moment to clear his throat.

“It’s not like I expect much from Edna.”

“I know,” Eric says, and squirms a bit. “But- she’s still your mom. And I-“

“Forman, I’m trying to sleep-“

“Yeah, I know, I know, I’m- look, I just want you to know I’m happy you’re here, all right? And- my folks and me, I mean- we’ll always be around, if you need us.”

They’re rarely so disgustingly sincere with each other these days. Steven feels like- ah, fuck it, he'll bite the bullet. 

“Thanks, Eric. Seriously.”

There’s a pause, maybe Eric readjusting to his first name, more shuffling. 

“Don’t mention it.”

The nightmare part of living with the Formans- well, there are several. The first is the most obvious, maybe- that he’s gone from essentially living alone for seventeen years to living within the confines of a nuclear family, and it’s not an easy adjustment. He’s unused to the noise, to the presence, most of all to the fact that he’s always under supervision. He gets claustrophobic from it, doesn’t understand how they can stand to live in each other’s pockets, day in, day out, how they don’t feel like they’re suffocating, going through their little routines. Then there’s the fact that somehow part of him loves this suffocation, and the rest of him hates himself for it. This self-loathing is second only to the self-loathing that kicks in whenever he thinks about the fact that Red is unemployed and Kitty is working double shifts and he’s not even remotely supposed to be there; the fact that had his mother holed up one house further he never would have attended that primary school and the Formans would have one less teenage-shaped burden on their hands, eating his way through their groceries and leeching off their generosity. 

Beyond all that? The worst part is that he now lives with Eric.

Living with Eric is far worse than he expected it to be. He doesn’t like to think about what that says about him. He’s known- known since middle school, really known since high school- that there are certain things wrong with him, and he’s quite artfully mastered them all, namely through heavy investment in Eric and Donna’s fated courtship and little one-on-one time with any of the guys. He’s got it under control, is the point, until he’s living with Eric and he just doesn’t. 

It’s hell. He doesn’t understand why or how, but it is. They spend _so much time_ together. Kitty’s sweetness is seeping into him by osmosis, maybe, or maybe he’s just horny out of his mind now that he can’t just bring girls over whenever. He’s fixating. It’s unhealthy. He's been like this with Donna, on and off over the years, but Donna’s different- Donna he’s had his shot with, though he's never managed to really take it. Eric he’s had nothing with, obviously, and he will never have anything with, because why would he, he’s not a fucking idiot. Even on days where it’s just the two of them, passing a joint on that dingy old couch, and Eric’s eyes are hazy but he’s still talking, always talking, always thinking his way through the next problem, and Steven thinks it would be so easy to just-

He doesn’t, though, of course he doesn’t. Not Eric. Never Eric. 

Kelso, once. He’s not proud of it. It’s crazy reckless as it is, but it’s not like it’s fucking easy, being a pillar of chastity around his friends for seventeen years, and when Kelso is sat there stoned out of his mind with teary mascara on his cheeks and a smudge of gloss on his lips, hell, what the fuck is he meant to do? He’s high too, for all that he handles it better; Eric and Fez amble upstairs to get food and take too long, and Kelso is laughing into his shoulder about something or other and Steven just snaps, yanks him up by the collar and kisses the living daylights out of him. Kelso barely even blinks, is the thing; takes it in stride like a champ, and only when the basement door clicks open what could well be hours later but is probably more like five minutes does Steven shove them apart and scramble to right himself on his chair, chest heaving and addled brain reduced to an incoherent buzz. Kelso blinks up at him once, lips red and slick, and for one terrifying moment he starts to tilt his head, but then there is Fez, and food, and distraction, and by the end of the evening Steven isn’t entirely sure he didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. Kelso definitely doesn’t even remember it happening; if he did Steven thinks he’d knock his teeth out- not so much for the kiss, because Kelso is kind of a slut if you appeal to his ego, but for the way he did it. 

There’s worse than Kelso, or maybe better, depending how you look at it. Nameless guys in dodgy alleys. Guys from school who can’t make eye contact after (like he’d want it). Old guys, sometimes, but he feels so dirty after he can’t muster it often. Not Buddy Morgan, despite what you’d expect.

It freaks him out, at the time, when Eric starts hanging out with fucking _Buddy_. Because he knows, about Buddy- not because anyone’s said, but because he knows. He knows, has known for years, and he hates him with uncharacteristic vitriol, for being so damn confident about it, charming and dimpled and god, Steven doesn’t know if he wants to kick the guy or kiss him. He never does either. Buddy kisses Eric, though, and that- fuck, that is just hilarious in the most terrible way. He replays the stolen memory obsessively, wonders how long it lasted, how Eric’s face looked after. Fucking Buddy. Eric insists he’s cool with it, which is more than Steven might have expected but still nothing to raise his expectations much, especially considering he never sees the two of them together again. 

He suspects, though, that Eric does still see the guy, because they’re awfully cordial in school. Which means that Eric hangs out with Buddy without any of them around, on purpose, and that’s just… It can’t be often, for one, but the fact that it happens at all…

He wonders why the hell Buddy Morgan thought Eric would want to be kissed by him. Eric. Like Eric Forman gives off that kind of vibe. He doesn’t; Steven would know. You’d expect him to, given the- well, everything about him, but he doesn’t. Maybe Buddy Morgan is just a predatory creep. Or maybe there was something, and maybe Eric did something, and maybe Eric is capable of giving off that vibe, just with the Buddy Morgans of the world. 

He has exactly one proper conversation with Buddy Morgan before the end of high school, and it’s at some party, Jackie’s friend’s place, long after he’s moved into the basement room; Eric and Donna are off frenching in a hammock, and Fez is missing, and Jackie and Kelso are having a domestic, and Steven just needs a damn cigarette and some air, so he sits on the porch outside amidst a cloud of smoke and finds Buddy Morgan peering at him curiously from a nearby bench. 

He considers storming off, but can’t muster the effort. Buddy Morgan gravitates slowly in his direction.

“Hi, Steven.”

“Morgan.”

“Long time no see.”

“Sure.”

“You here with Eric?”

“Sure,” Steven repeats, more sarcastic this time. Small talk with Buddy Morgan. What a joy his life has become. 

Unfortunately for him, Buddy Morgan is a fucking menace, because he smiles at this, all perfect wide teeth and crinkly eyes, like it’s so very amusing that Steven is being a bitch to him.

“Hey, could I have a smoke?”

“You smoke?” Steven asks, despite himself, as Buddy sits down next to him, a safe distance away, still smiling faintly. 

“Sure, on occasion. It’s cold out.”

Steven’s a bastard but he’s not that petty; he extends his cigarette, watches Buddy inhale like someone who knows what he’s doing, smoke curling pleasantly out of his mouth. Buddy’s real fair about it, naturally; he takes a drag and a half and then hands the cigarette back.

“You better not be hitting on me,” Steven says, after a beat, half-hearted, just because he’s not feeling up to sitting in this weird silence pretending like there’s nothing strange about the two of them all friendly all of a sudden. Buddy only laughs, sort of wryly, not a bit ashamed or surprised. 

“You’d know if I was.”

“Would I now,” Steven mutters, and is glad it comes out dry, because there was a second where it might have come out as something altogether different, and he’s already off his game as is. 

“Yeah,” Buddy says, and shakes his head, smiling at his feet. “I guess it’d be easier that way, considering.”

Steven freezes for half a second, wants to whip his head around and ask exactly what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, or maybe kick Buddy into the dirt, except- except- 

His vision returns in increments, red haze fading a little.

His breathing is carefully even when he tilts his head towards him, watchful. His voice is calm.

“How’d you know?”

Buddy’s smile slips, but his eyes are still disturbingly, casually warm, not a hint of an agenda to his gaze. “Same way you did, I guess. I just do.” 

It’s unsettling, but it’s better than rumours, he guesses. He wants to look away from the guy but he feels it might come off like he’s afraid of him. 

“I’m not really. Mostly it’s girls.”

“Oh, right,” Buddy says. Nods. “So is it Eric or Donna?”

Steven cuts him a look, but he’s still so damn genuine, not even trying to catch him off guard, just wondering, like maybe he thinks Steven wants to talk about it. Fucking hell.

“Don’t see how that’s any of your business, man.”

“Oh, sure,” Buddy agrees, nods, frowns. “Hey, sorry, Steven. I didn’t mean-“

“Yeah, whatever,” Steven says. His cigarette is burning out. 

Buddy hesitates, his pretty little rich boy face creasing with indecision, and then he smiles carefully and reaches out to pat him on the shoulder, brief but firm, and Steven knows (like he has always loathed to suspect) that Buddy Morgan _gets it,_ on some level, gets it more than anyone else he knows. 

“I’m going to head back inside. You coming?”

Steven sighs, stubs the cigarette. “I’ll see you inside.”

They don’t speak again for at least a year, but the conversation haunts him, in some weird way. He doesn’t understand how it is that someone he barely knows and actively dislikes can get under his walls so quickly and so effortlessly. Maybe that’s just how people get when they accept it- maybe they gain some kind of freaky telepathic know-how for anyone in the same boat.

Steven is not on the same boat as Buddy Morgan. If Buddy Morgan is on a cruise to California, Steven is on a sinking lifeboat from Mexico. 

He dreams about him once. In the dream they’re talking, sitting in Buddy’s car, and Buddy has his sunglasses on. 

“You know what’s bullshit?” Steven says. “Seventeen fucking years. And you’re the one who kissed him.”

“Maybe if you did it he’d kiss you back,” Buddy says, and smiles, and turns on the radio. 

The radio is his alarm clock. He misses first period.

Some days, he has the unshakeable feeling that Forman knows. Or- no, not that he knows, but that he’s not half so stupid as he acts about it.

Maybe that’s unfair. Eric isn’t actually stupid. Out of their group, he’s one of the most competent, and most of his antics stem out of his awkward sincerity; some ingrained urge to do the right thing battling his short-term selfishness. Steven wouldn’t know. Selfishness is his lingua franca, no matter what Kitty Forman thinks. 

So maybe Eric’s not stupid, fine. More like obtuse. Naive. Those damn cues again. Steven doesn’t know how he manages it- walking that fine line between acerbic sarcasm and virgin innocence at all times. He will never understand him, and so he will never stop being friends with him of his own volition, despite Forman’s obnoxiously sheltered faux-pas. (The reverse is not true- he expects once they start university he will never hear from any of them again.)

Still, living in each other’s pockets like they all have for all of their lives- he wonders sometimes how it is that he has managed to keep so much of himself a mystery. It’s not that he’s dumb- he knows they all, in their own way, know him more intimately than he is comfortable with- but at the same time there is just so much about him they don’t know, and sometimes it’s almost irritating, like an itch, that he has to know them all so profoundly and they can’t even see through the walls he has up. It makes him question how much of their apparent ignorance is feigned- with regards to his dubious childhood, for one, and then also with regards to the other stuff. 

It’s not as ridiculous a thought as it seems, for all that none of them act like they know. His childhood is an open secret; it’s more a question of just how much they’re aware of. He’s had incidents with all of them, one way or another. Kelso in middle school, matter-of-factly handing him his spare snacks or sharing his games sometimes, on account of his being ‘sad’, when not even Steven himself had realised it was showing that he’d been living off dry rice for days. Fez, abruptly, one night, giving him an uncomfortably touchy-feely hug for so long that he’d flipped all the way from cynical levity to discomfort to finding himself sagging heavily into the hold despite himself, trying to understand how some oddball foreigner he barely knew could pat his back like he knew how he’d felt during Edna’s latest drunken tangent. Even Jackie, of all fucking people; Jackie who possesses the tact of a sledgehammer on the best of days, screaming herself red-faced at some complete randos whose parentage-based taunts would normally have bounced right off him, like she had any clue that it was the anniversary of his old man walking out. Pinciotti, obviously, time and time again, Donna buying him his tinged shades when the old ones broke and not saying a word about how quickly he snapped them on, how much less naked he felt. Forman, with a carefulness he doesn’t possess, always giving without making it feel like he is, making Kitty stuff extras into his lunch, insisting Steven could do his laundry at theirs to save time, holding sleepovers far past the acceptable age for such ventures, always coincidentally timed with nights he couldn’t bear to sleep at home. 

So all of them know, to some degree. Especially after he moves in. It’s harder to hide this shit when he doesn’t know what to hide- it’s easy enough, disguising bruises and keeping his mouth shut about the shit he knows parents aren’t meant to do unless he can make it sound funny, but it’s so exhaustingly difficult to try and keep up with the Formans, not to expose himself with the small things. When Kitty makes hot dish after hot dish and he can’t help but blurt out his disbelieving appreciation; when their budget restricts further and Red catches him packing his bag and demands to know what he’s doing; when Forman kicks him under the table for saying some shit he didn’t realise adults weren’t supposed to know kids knew about, like how to stop someone who’s OD’ed from choking to death on their own vomit. It’s always followed by everyone in the room avoiding his eyes, or worse, making sad eyes at him, and there are few things he hates more than the cold pit of shame that opens up in his stomach when he registers that he’s slipped up somehow. It’s fucking hard acting like a real boy. It leaves him exposed, and not just because there are people watching him all the time now. 

He doesn’t know how much they see. He doesn’t know if, over the years, his other shit has managed to spill through the cracks. It’s almost worse than his sad parentage, because for the most part he’s blameless in that, objectively, despite the attitudes of some; for the most part he gets that people see him as a victim, which is stupid and incorrect and kind of humiliating, but is at least sympathetic, well-intentioned. This other shit, though- that’s on him. That’s him, not Edna, not Stuart, not any other poor guidance he might have gotten from the TV or elsewhere. Steven can make the kid stuff funny- can be wry about it, can revel in just how terrible the adults in his life were, can come out lily white. There is nothing to be wry about where the rest is concerned. Whenever he even privately manages to accept it, guilty self-disgust kicks in like a bitch, and god damnit- it’s so unfair that he be saddled with this bullshit, on top of everything, like his cards haven’t been bad enough, like it’s not enough to be destined for jail from birth, like he’s not got enough screws loose. The kicker is that for the most part he’s been remarkably successful at avoiding the self-loathing he’d been teetering towards as a kid- built up his persona so well that he bought into it, that for the most part he doesn’t beat himself up about the circumstances of his life, that he’s comfortable in his own skin. This, though? This he can’t take. 

Fucking Buddy Morgan, Steven thinks, instinctively. Let the Buddy Morgans of the world handle it, having one bad card in their flawless hand. (Buddy Morgan’s actual hands are flawless too- not prissy, just nice, long fingers like he plays piano, which he probably does, and nails trimmed because he’s a nice neat kid with nice neat fingers, and Steven really truly loathes him some days.)

What really makes it worse than the shit with Edna is that he worries about it incessantly. 

He wouldn’t describe himself as a worrier. In a practical sense he’s had times where worrying was all he did- worry about his next meal, worry about the rent, worry about where Edna was, worry about who Edna was with, worry about the soles of his shoes, about the pounding on his door- but even as a kid he’d always been good at keeping a level head, and it hadn’t been worry so much as forethought. Now that he lives at Forman’s, he doesn’t even need to think about any of that shit. He still does, but he doesn’t have to. Instead he only has to think long-term, about what happens once they graduate, because once he turns eighteen there is no place for him in this house, and he needs a plan. But he doesn't even really worry about that- he has a bit of money, and he can hold a job down, and he doesn’t need much to get by. Maybe Kitty will let him come do laundry at theirs once in a while. 

Still, this thing? The idea of people knowing? Yeah. He worries. He is very smart about it- times his sporadic escapades with perfect cover-ups, never lets anyone catch him looking, doesn’t so much as blink at the jokes or the barbs people throw around thoughtlessly, has girls maybe a little more often than he would naturally be inclined to (he’s lazy, sue him). It’s all so very casual. He’s not like most of the guys at school, overcompensating like idiots, like someone with two braincells can’t see right through that blustering violence. Steven’s got the whole thing rigged to perfection, and _yet_. 

It’s like the kid stuff. Incidents. Each of them has their own variety.

Kelso is a moron, but he has some weird emotional intelligence that rears its head at the strangest times, and that makes him the hardest to shield against, in a way. Once or twice Steven has caught him looking at him almost thoughtfully, and realised he didn’t know what he’d been doing to cause the look; it’s bone-chilling. He remembers vividly that once when they were about fifteen they’d been laid out at Kelso’s place for a change, spread on the floor browsing through pornos, and Eric had abruptly flushed scarlet in that almost audible way of his, dropping a magazine like it had burnt him. 

“Kelso! What the- why do you have this?”

“Have what?” Kelso had asked, and then made wide-eyed at the incriminating rag, which featured a lot of nudity and not a lot of woman. “Woah.”

Steven, for one long second, had remained frozen, throat dry, feeling feverish. Then he’d mentally punched himself in the face and managed a smirk. “Trying to tell us something, man?”

“No way!” Kelso had defended, though it was mitigated by his curious staring. “I guess it was in the box or something. It looks kind of old.”

“Why are you even looking?” Eric had groaned, though he kept glancing back at himself. “It’s- I mean, the way they- it’s gross!”

Steven hadn’t blamed him for looking. He’d only refrained from staring through sheer will-power.

“To each their own, man,” he’d drawled, trying for vaguely condescending, losing it a little when Eric shot him a very blue-eyed look, cheeks blotted with pink and expression very unsure. “It’s not like you’ve never seen yourself naked.”

This had made Kelso snicker a little, losing the open-mouthed fascination. “Bet yours doesn’t look like these guys’.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eric had muttered. He had just started swearing properly; the novelty had still been funny to Steven, who’d smirked. “Forgive me for being a little startled by the sausage fest.” He’d glanced back at the magazine unwillingly, less petrified but still red-faced. “People were not supposed to move that way.”

He’d meant it flippantly, because the men (much like their female counterparts) had been contorted into some very uncomfortable positions, but for some ungodly reason it had made Steven’s smirk recede a little, and when he’d caught Kelso’s eye there’d been something oddly terse to it for half a second. 

“To each their own, man,” Kelso had parroted, grinning broadly. “And speaking of my own- have you seen this choice babe?”

Complete coincidence, probably. Definitely. The memory still haunts him. 

Jackie and Fez have eerily similar ways of putting him on edge, for people so staggeringly different. Maybe it’s because they’re the outsiders of the group, Kelso’s respective plus ones; maybe observing them from the outside means seeing things Steven’s become too used to to see. Jackie never says a single thing, probably because she considers it uncouth to talk about such things, and she certainly seems more than convinced by his womanising guiles, but just sometimes he catches her _watching_ him, when he’s mocking Forman or Kelso, when he’s zoned out of a conversation, and there’s something in the way she’s observing without ever following up on it that makes him break out in cold sweat even as he raises a teasing eyebrow in her direction, asks if she sees something she likes. Fez does the same thing, only in reverse. When Fez first lands he watches and then asks questions, and they’re all vaguely ridiculous from an American perspective but Steven still flinches whenever he questions some masculine norm and uses him as example. Then he stops asking the dumb questions and starts only asking hard ones, and Steven has to give the fucker credit- he doesn’t think there are many things that can scare him sober, but the time Fez turns to him at a party and asks why he spends so much time watching Eric if this is not typically acceptable amongst polite heterosexual company accomplishes it fast. Always watching, the two of them, and he doesn’t know what they see. 

Then there’s Pinciotti. Then there’s Forman. 

Pinciotti is an odd one because by all rights she should have cracked it by now. She’s sharp, Donna, and even though she pretends not to she watches him closely, and he thinks if she cared to know she’d know a lot more about him than he dares to think about. It’s a depressing truth. So maybe it’s just because she doesn’t care about who he fucks, about the details of his love life, except on occasion when she acknowledges where she features in his fever dreams. It’s just unlike her, to fail to notice, not to smell blood, and although Donna can sometimes be as bad as Eric (as good as Eric, as hot scalding his as Eric) with the cues, this isn’t an instance of charming naïveté. She knew about Buddy. He can’t quite believe she’s just missed this entirely, but she has, and this is worse, actually, because it leaves him with not the slightest indication of what she will do once she notices. 

Forman… God, Forman. Obviously he buys into his mythos. Unlike Donna, Forman not knowing makes sense- there’s no reason for him to question Steven the way she does. He knows well enough that despite himself Eric finds him cool, aspirational; he had a girlfriend long before Eric, and sex long before Eric, and this too had solidified his position in the group as the cool mentor type. So it’s not that Eric’s ever shown signs of doubting him. And thought there are instances between them- touches, conversations- that Steven has frozen and preserved in his mind, ready to explain away, Forman never reacts to him like he can sense it, never corners him to confront heavy gazes and nights away. It should all be fine. It is all fine. They’re fine. Only there are days where everything between them feels charged, and Eric goes oddly quiet, hard to distract, and Steven feels like a cornered animal with no sense of the threat he’s avoiding. Times where it’s just the two of them, day in, day out, and the Forman utopia wearing him down so he feels cracked open, and Forman looking at him like he can see right into him. 

It’s fine, he reminds himself, mechanically. It’s fine. He only has until the end of high school to survive. Once high school is over and everyone fucks off to college they’ll drift further and further away from him, and there will never be any need to keep himself so tightly wound up. Once high school is over he’ll scrounge his earnings together and leave, and it’ll just be him alone, and the people watching won’t matter. His mistake was letting people matter so much, but then he was a kid; couldn’t be helped.

Predictably, it all goes to shit. 

The real kicker is that he’s imagined the scenario a million times over. How it would go, if someone found out. He has a hundred spin-offs a piece, for each person the reveal might originate from. Kelso blurting it out. Jackie cornering him viciously. Fez innocently dropping the bomb. Pinciotti catching him off guard. Forman, most of all- Forman catching him in the act somehow, Forman rearing back, or Forman’s parents, or his fucking sister, because god knows that bitch wouldn’t hesitate to announce the news far and wide if she ever got that much leverage. Strangers. His mother. Buddy fucking Morgan.

He doesn’t expect it to happen the way it does, though. He doesn’t think even in his wildest dreams he could have come up with the bullshit series of events that destroys his finely constructed deception. 

It starts with a fuck-up, if you really trace it back to its origins. Not even Steven’s, which is ridiculous. But Steven only finds that out later, so really it starts with him getting punched in the face. 

It’s a day like any other- it happens as he’s waiting lounged against Kelso’s dumb sex-wagon as school is let out, having finished a period early and having neither a ride of his own nor the will to walk back to Forman’s alone. Jackie emerges first, always depressingly punctual, and he gives her a cool nod as she fixes her hair fussily and struts over to him, thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“I didn’t realise you were riding with us, Steven.”

“Well, Forman’s off sick,” Steven starts, with a mild eyeroll at the name. She’s the only person his age he knows who actually calls him by his name, after all this time of his being Hyde. “You gonna make me walk?”

Jackie scoffs, looks about to engage in one of their typical faux-arguments, and then frowns, mouth quirking downwards with alarm. Steven stirs a little, follows her gaze, straightens. Some big guy is storming over to them, lackeys in tow, and he doesn’t recognise him but he recognises the look on his face. 

“Get out of here, princess,” Steven starts, casual, but it’s too late to warn her; one of them is fixing him, and he lifts a brow at them as they bee-line closer.

“You Hyde?” Big Guy asks, slow. He doesn’t even look stupid, just vicious; he’s clean-cut, looks more like a jock than the typical breed of muscle Steven has to contend with every so often. 

“Who’s asking?” Steven asks, still lounging against the car. Big Guy ignores him completely, turns to Jackie instead. 

“You his girlfriend?”

He’s red-faced with some kind of indignation; Steven’s sure he’s never seen the guy in his life, tries to figure out what the hell his grievance is.

“I most certainly am not!” Jackie exclaims, offended even now, then turns to Steven. “Do you know these people?”

“Can’t say I do.” 

“It’s him,” Big Guy’s lackey insists, fists curled. “Steven Hyde, man, everyone knows who he is, he’s that whore’s kid.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth, man?” Steven asks, and ignores Jackie’s alarmed and offended little gasp (how is she even a real person he hangs out with, seriously), covertly cracking his knuckles. He’s not actually much of a fighter, not out of pacifism so much as self-preservation, but he’s had to wriggle his way out of a beatdown or two; he has a feeling his odds in this one aren’t looking too good. 

“Yeah, I’m glad you find this funny,” Big Guy decides, eyes darkening decisively. Then he punches him right in the face, hard. 

Steven had anticipated it, so it hits him in the cheekbone instead of breaking his nose, but he still goes reeling as Jackie shrieks, students gasping and crowding around them. Fucking _ow_ \- he staggers, ducks just in time to avoid the second blow, trips up when he realises the three of them have him pretty much cornered. 

“What the fuck was that for?”

“Stay away from my sister,” Big Guy hisses, fuming, and then one of his lackeys has Steven by the back of his jacket so the next punch gets him right in the gut; he folds double, manages to land a very impressive kick to the second lackey’s crotch before he can join in on the action, elbows the guy behind him hard enough to just about miss the follow-up, but he’s fucked, he can tell. Jackie is screeching nearby; Steven is wheezing, flailing to make himself a harder target. What could he have done to this jackass’ sister? Slept with her, presumably- god, surely she’s not...

“Listen, you ass, I don’t even know-“

“That goes for you and all your other homo friends,” Big Guy continues, and this more than anything stuns Steven into gobsmacked silence long enough that he slackens and the next punch hits him straight-on, sickening lurch as his nose cracks audibly and his glasses fall to the ground, shattering on impact. He staggers, slams into the car door, ears ringing, disbelieving as blood streams into his fingers. 

“Motherfuck-“ 

“That’s enough!” comes a shrill voice, and very abruptly Big Guy is yelling, falling back as Steven blinks in confusion, his vision a little blurred. Someone is standing in front of him now, brandishing- mace, he thinks, and thus Jackie. 

“You can’t be serious,” Big Guy exclaims, still furiously clutching his face as tears stream from his eyes. “Do you know what this queer-“

“I said enough!” Jackie shrieks, and shakes the mace threateningly. “You clearly have the wrong person, you incompetent lugs, and besides gay bashing is so incredibly passé-“

“We don’t have-“

“Woah, woah, what the hell is going on here?” comes Kelso’s voice, and this is when the spots clouding his vision abruptly grow in size and everything goes black. 

He wakes up maybe a minute or two later, by which point not much has changed except that he’s flat on his back on the pavement and Big Guy and his lackeys have vanished; Kelso is looming over him with big curious eyes, and Jackie’s little heels are tapping impatiently by his head. His whole face feels like it’s on fire.

“Please tell me there was no need for CPR.”

Kelso’s expression clears, relieved grin breaking through, and he leans back, extending Steven a hand to pull himself upright with. It hurts; he thinks he bruised a rib or two at least. Shit. 

“Hyde, man, you look like shit! Had us worried for a second there.”

“I feel like shit, too,” Steven says, flatly. His nose is still dripping blood. “Where’d the big guy go?”

“Cleared out once I got involved,” Kelso shrugs, casting a look towards at Jackie. “I guess they finally figured they might’ve gotten the wrong guy or something. I didn’t really understand. Jackie shouted a lot.”

Jackie’s lips are pursed hard when he reluctantly meets her gaze, and she sniffs and looks away. “We should get him home, Michael, or he’ll bleed out in your car.”

His shades lie in broken shards by his feet. Somehow this hits him worse than the physical blows; he sways a little, represses a completely foreign and unexpected urge to cry. Fuck, this is stupid- everything hurts and he feels naked. 

“Hey, you okay?”

“I second your girlfriend,” Steven dismisses, voice steady. He reaches to pick up the remains of his glasses as casually as he can, then slides the door open to hoist himself into the passenger seat, keeping the wincing to a minimum as his breaths turn heavy. “Hit the gas, man.”

Jackie and Kelso exchange telepathic conversation; Kelso climbs in and turns the key as Jackie settles between them. 

“What the hell was that about, anyway?” Kelso asks, a couple of minutes in; Steven’s been trying to keep his eyes open, wary of a mild concussion. 

“I have no idea.” He glances towards Jackie. “I noticed it took you some time to decide not to let them beat the shit out of me.”

“Well, I thought you might have deserved it,” Jackie huffs. “It’s not like it would be such a surprise if you’d gotten some unfortunate girl pregnant. I intervened once I realised they were talking nonsense.”

Her tone is a little challenging; he meets her eyes evenly. “Yeah. Not sure what that was about.”

“I didn’t get that either!” Kelso interjects, turning to stare at him. “I thought they called you gay and stuff! Why would you be after their sister?”

“Beats me,” Steven shrugs, then regrets the movement. “Guess the kind of people who beat the shit out of strangers on sight aren’t the type to really solidify their logic ahead of time.”

“Huh?”

“Forget it, Michael.” 

He’s feeling pretty crappy by the time they reach the Formans, throbbing in ways he hasn’t in years. His nose has stopped bleeding, but he’s pretty sure it’s solidly broken, and so every time he tries to breathe in it makes blood fill his nostrils, which in turns make him panic internally. He’s reduced to breathing through his mouth, nerves shot. Sometimes he misses the days he could just drag himself home and no one would be the wiser- instead, as Kelso swerves into the Formans’ driveway, he spots both Forman and Pinciotti on the porch talking to Kitty, and his blood turns to ice. Shit, shit, shit, adults, why did he forget about fucking adults-

“Wow, Kelso, sloppy parking job much,” comes Donna’s voice, as he climbs stiffly out of the car; then there is a beat of stunned silence. “Oh my go- Hyde, what the hell happened to you?”

He leaves himself one second to inhale, eyes shutting briefly, then turns to face them as neutrally as he can, hands curling into reflexive fists at the scrutiny. Donna’s face is pale with shock; Eric is wide-eyed and horrified, but Kitty Forman, hand on her chest, is the one his eyes lock on, and it destabilises him again, that same urge to cry like a damn infant welling up in his chest. He beats it down fiercely, quirks his eyebrows would-be casually.

“What, not even a hello?”

“Oh- oh, Steven,” Kitty Forman gasps, and then rushes forwards, visibly shaking herself, grabs his arm steadily to drag him inside. “Come in, come in, let’s get you fixed up, you poor thing, oh-“

“It’s not that bad, Mrs Forman,” Steven says, out of habit, though really he wants to do something dumb like hang onto her all the way inside. Eric mutely holds the door for them, eyes fixed on his bloody face, and the others tail him like a befuddled pack of ducklings, obediently lined-up. Kitty redirects him to the couch, where the still-gaping group hovers around him aimlessly as she retrieves her first-aid kit. 

“Seriously, Hyde,” Eric starts, low and stunned. “What-“

“These three guys laid into him after school,” Kelso chimes in, with that beat of excitement that always follows a fight. “It was crazy. Jackie maced ‘em.”

“You barely saw it,” Jackie interjects, crossing her arms. “But that’s mostly accurate. They’d obviously gotten him mixed up with someone else. It was ridiculous.”

“Christ,” Eric breathes, but shuts up as his mother returns, parting through concerned teenagers like Moses. 

“Now, Steven, you’re going to have to sit very still, and this might hurt quite a bit, so please try your best not to move too much, all right?” He nods, tightly- the next thing he knows there is a horrible snapping sound and he nearly spasms out of the chair in pain; only keeping his eyes fixed on Forman’s face as the guy nearly faints keeps him grounded enough to repress a scream, his nose slotted back into place. Kitty’s kind eyes meet his, and he lets out a shaky breath, clearing his throat. 

“That it?”

“That’s the worst of it, I’d imagine,” Kitty says, gently, and fixes some kind of heavy bandage atop his nose, pressing down hard. He bites his tongue, sits very still; manages to do the same as she starts picking shards out of his face from where his glasses bit it. 

“Oh, your shades,” Donna blurts, almost accidentally. She’s still uncannily pale. Steven averts his eyes.

“Yeah, collateral. They had a good run.”

Kitty wipes the blood off for him, sticks a bandage or two over the deeper cuts, then examines him critically. “Anywhere else?”

He hesitates, nods. “They got me in the stomach a bunch, but I reckon that’ll just bruise. I think the ribs might have-“ He cuts off abruptly when she presses lightly against his ribs, suppressing a yell.

“Bruised or broken,” Kitty confirms, and feels around a bit more. “I should think bruised, though. Do you mind lifting your shirt?”

“Not in front of Eric, Mrs Forman,” Steven manages, making Eric grimace reflexively and Kitty tut, reluctantly amused. He obeys, though, fights the urge to wince at how doubly-exposed he feels. He guesses it looks worse than it feels, because Jackie abruptly turns away, hand to her chest, and even Kelso looks queasy.

“All right,” Kitty decides. “Bruised. Not much to be done about that, I’m afraid- but we’ll ice them for the time being.” 

She wraps him two ice-packs, one for his face and one for his ribs, and just like that it’s done, Kitty slipping neatly out of her calm nurse mode and right back into a fussy mother, tutting anxiously at him. 

“Oh, Steven. This is awful! You’ll have to take it very easy the next week- no running around, and no smoking, do you hear me? God, to think kids your age did this to you-“ She shakes her head, looking on the verge of tears. “There’ll be big trouble for them, mark my words.”

“That’s really not necessary, Mrs F,” Steven interrupts, mostly because the more she keeps looking at him like that the more he feels like crying, and he is absolutely not crying in front of all of his friends like this, even if she looks so upset for him, even if his pulse is still jack-hammer fast with fear and she must have felt it, and he just needs space to think but he also doesn’t want her to leave him, and- 

He blinks very hard. “I feel fine now. Thanks for patching me up.”

She only frowns, nods, gives him a tight smile, then squeezes his shoulder a final time before letting off, glancing around at his friends. “Well, now, you all better behave yourselves, and no antics today, you hear? You might as well stay in here so Steven doesn’t have to move.”

There are murmurs of assent; Steven closes his eyes while she tidies up, suddenly exhausted. All of him hurts, except where he’s pressing the ice-pack, and two hands feels like too heavy a burden. 

“Here, let me,” Donna says, abruptly by his side on the couch, voice gentler than usual. He shoots her a tired smirk and relinquishes the pack on his face; she presses it gingerly against his nose. Kelso settles on the armchair, Jackie on his lap; Eric sits himself on Steven’s other side, turned so they’re almost facing each other. 

“God, Hyde. You really don’t know what they wanted?”

“Not a clue, man,” Steven sighs. “They weren’t making any sense.” This is how he’s spinning the narrative. Low on details, heavy on mockery. It’ll pass. It has to pass. 

“The guy was angry about his sister or something,” Kelso adds, shooting Jackie a confused look for confirmation, “Except we don’t really get why because he also seemed to think Hyde was, like, gay.”

“Hyde?” Eric asks, incredulous, which Steven would normally pay attention to except-

“Ow, fuck, Pinciotti, watch what you’re doing!” 

“Sorry,” Donna rushes, from where she’d just brutally slammed the icepack into his nose. “Sorry, I-“ 

He squints at her through the teary blur. “What?”

“Nothing, hand slipped,” Donna manages, still kind of strangled. She’s not looking at him. “You said Jackie maced them?”

“That’s right,” Jackie sniffs. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks, Jackie, they only beat me half to death before you interfered.”

“This is crazy,” Eric decides, shaking his head. “Do we know who these guys were?”

“Why, Forman, you gonna go beat them up for me?” Steven asks, amused. Kelso laughs. 

“I recognised one of them from the Southside football team,” Jackie answers, while Eric shoots him a flat look. “They don’t go to our school.”

“Well, I appreciate their commitment,” Steven says, dryly. “Really know how to make a guy feel special.”

He gets progressively more tired and monotone over the next hour or so, and Kitty eventually chases the whole group out, leaving Steven to nap on the couch as Eric helps her set the table for dinner. He thinks he sees Donna hover in the doorframe before she goes, but he’s too tired to focus. 

He wakes up disoriented and in pain, a feeling he really would have liked to leave in his childhood, but it takes only moments for the familiarity of the house to assuage his worries, and he sits gingerly upright, finds Red staring at him with his jaw set. Steven stiffens.

“Evening, Red.”

Red only grunts, vanishing into the kitchen. 

Dinner is an awkward affair. Only Kitty has the decency to try and keep things normal. Laurie is shamelessly revelling in his injuries, Eric is still staring at him, and Red is glowering at him intently; then there’s the fact he can barely chew without his entire face throbbing. By the time they’re done he’s ready to run downstairs and never emerge, but Red catches him by the elbow as he stands, clearing his throat gruffly. 

“You all right, son?”

Steven blinks, caught off guard, has to try twice before he can force it out. “Yeah, fine, man.”

“Well,” Red nods. Nods again. “Well, that’s good.”

“…Can I-“

“Yeah, yeah, and don’t be such a dumbass next time,” Red grouches, pushing him towards the basement door. Steven feels kind of like crying _again_. 

He sleeps like the dead the second he reaches his cot; wakes up midday the next day. He’s off school until the weekend at least, so he spends the day lounging around watching TV and changing his ice-packs every so often. 

Being alone gives him time to think. He has no idea what the hell he got beat up for, which is worse than knowing, because he can’t grasp the implications. ‘Him and all his friends’, and some random chick from Southside? What’s the connection supposed to be? It feels off-base enough that he’s not panicking, but his stomach is in knots anyways. If some random strangers from the other side of town know-

In the end, he doesn’t need to wonder very long: Donna comes by mid-afternoon. 

He’s sprawled watching TV and ignoring the stinging in his face when the knock comes, and he frowns vaguely to himself as the door opens, wondering if Forman was let out early or something. When he sees Donna he frowns harder, smooths his expression out when he catches himself doing it. Don’t let it be said that Steven Hyde’s implacable chill was affected by a couple of punches. 

“Pinciotti,” he greets, noting Donna’s pinched expression and odd demeanour. He’d sort of forgotten about her weirdness the previous day, but now it comes rushing back to him, and he gives her a hard look, even as he gestures casually for her to join him. “Sneaking around to come proclaim your love for me while I’m bed-ridden?”

“Funny,” Donna says, which is a relief, in the sense that she can still shoot down his jokes, but she stays pale. Her eyes are lined by purple, like she hasn’t slept all night. “I came to tell you something.”

“Sounds serious,” Steven says, mock-grave, but she stays silent as she takes a seat on the chair nearest to the door, fists clenched. He drops the act to stare at her as she fails to look at him. God, he hasn’t seen her like this in- forever, actually, he’s not sure she’s ever looked so… 

Afraid. Unconsciously he feels himself gentle. 

“Hey. Spit it out, Donna.”

She looks up, nods, looks down. “I…” Their eyes meet again, and she flinches. “It’s my fault you got beat up.”

Of all the outcomes, he somehow hadn’t anticipated that. “ _What?”_

“They- they were after me,” Donna continues, fixing her lap. “And I’m- I gave them your name.”

Something painful stabs him in the gut as he boggles at her. “You what now?”

“I never- god, I’ve been so stupid,” Donna says, fiercely, putting her face in her hands. “I just never thought-“

“Listen, Pinciotti,” Steven starts, warning. “Start from the top and explain, because if you’re saying you sent these guys after me-“

“I know,” Donna interjects, so miserably that his building anger cools a little. “I just don’t want you to hate me.”

He’s not sure whether to berate her over that, and while he’s mulling over it she seems to pull herself together, still waxy but determined, straightening to look at him, fists clenched in her lap. 

“Do you remember that protest I was part of at school a while ago? When those people were sending Buddy Morgan death threats?” 

Fucking Buddy Morgan. Steven nods, setting his jaw.

Donna takes a deep breath. “Well, as part of that whole initiative, I ended up going with him to this- coffeeshop downtown, where there’s a sort of- secret club, for people who… Anyways. It was just to keep him company. A lot of the people don’t even show; they just leave each other letters, like a pen-pal system. Buddy’s one of the only people who shows his face all the time. I wanted to be supportive, so I left a letter, and when we went back the next time I’d gotten a reply. Long story short, I started going whenever I had time to kill; I’d made myself a penpal, and-“ 

She stops again; Steven is mute, staring. “I guess eventually I started feeling like my penpal and I- like we had a lot more in common than I had originally suspected, and of course it wasn’t- you know, I love Eric, but I just- I guess I thought this was a safe way of talking about…” 

She inhales, hard. “The point being that this whole time I’d been writing under a pseudonym, and on the spot I’d just called myself Hyde, because it was the first thing that came to mind. Except I guess my penpal’s family found her letters, because-“

They look at each other. Donna seems incapable of formulating words, just gestures vaguely at the state of him. 

It takes him a very long time to respond, and he watches Donna withdraw into a blank state of panic; then he snaps out of his daze.

“You’re saying that you- I mean, you're into-“

“I don’t know,” Donna says, staring at his knees. “I don’t- I think so, but then there’s Eric, of course, and I just- I don’t know, I always- I thought if I ignored it- I mean, it’s not a big deal, it’s-“

“It’s clearly a big deal if your _penpal’s_ brothers beat the shit out of me over it-“

“Fuck, fine!” Donna exclaims, and drags a hand over her face, shaking. “God, Hyde, I’m so sorry, all right, I just- I knew I couldn’t say anything to you all, what’s Eric going to think-“

“Woah, woah,” Steven interrupts, and remembers himself. “Hey- look, I’m not going to tell Forman, are you crazy?”

“You’re not?”

The look on her face- he flinches. 

“No, Donna, why the hell would I? It’s none of his business. It’s not like you and this girl were-“

“No,” Donna rushes, and looks at him with wary incomprehension. “But-“

“Fuck,” Steven says. “Okay. This is some bullshit.”

Fear rises in his throat as he tries to say it, but this is _Donna,_ who he will always be at least a little in love with, and she looks stricken and raw and somehow still composed, and despite it all they are so fucking alike- he should have seen this coming, somehow, should have known that if Donna never asked it was because- 

He tugs at his hair, swallows hard, mostly keeps his cool. “Look, I- I’m the same. All right?”

For a moment she’s silent, and he thinks it has to have been a trick of some kind, but-

“You,” Donna breathes, questioningly, disbelief drenched in relief. “You- Hyde, really?”

He meets her gaze, fighting for calm, sees no deceit, sags a little. “Yup.”

Silence again, then: “No shit.”

They stare at each other, and colour returns to her cheeks, and it's all so stupid that Steven feels his pulse slow, something in his gut unclench, the corner of his lip twitching incredulously. Donna catches it, and then her own lips are quirking upwards, brows raising in disbelief. 

“This is crazy,” Steven drawls, slowly, despite himself. Donna’s lips twitch further. “Fucking Buddy Morgan.”

“You never- I mean, you and him-“

He gives her a disgusted look, and that’s all it takes- Donna bursts out laughing, semi-hysterical with latent nerves, and it’s hard not to join in. They sit there laughing like idiots for god knows how long, unable to stop exchanging looks and starting anew; Steven has to keep stopping to grip at his ribs in pain. 

“Thank god no one else was here to witness this,” Donna manages, still sort of giggly. “It would really mess with my image in this group to be caught having a nervous breakdown.”

“Your image? Have you met me?”

Donna throws him a look so openly fond and warm that he forgets where he was going; it’s been years since they indulged in such sincerity, and even as kids Donna was hardly the emotional type. 

“I should have known you’d get it, somehow,” Donna says, aloud, wry. “Always seems to work out that way for us.”

“Hey now,” Steven replies, though it’s especially half-hearted considering he was thinking the exact same thing maybe five minutes prior. “Let’s not be too hasty. A broken home and a sexual perversion does not a Hyde make.” 

Donna snorts at that, sobering a little as she shakes her head. “God. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know about you, but I was going to do what I do best,” Steven says, waiting a beat for dramatic effect. “Nothing.”

“Forever, Hyde?” 

“As long as it takes.” He shrugs. “In a year I’ll be in my own place and you lot will be off in college. After that…”

She frowns; he can tell she wants to fight him on the implication, but it’s Donna, so she chooses her battles based on practicality.

“Fine for you. I do have parents and a boyfriend, though.”

“That’s your problem right there, then,” Steven says, mildly. “We can’t all have the head start I had in life.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

He has no real answer to give her. He considers himself pretty lucky on this point, as previously established. There are no adults in his life to disappoint, except the Formans, but once he’s graduated they’ll hardly be keeping tabs. He has no Eric-to-Donna equivalent he’s going to be marrying straight out of college. In short, there’s no one who will inevitably uncover his secret unless he lives the rest of his life shrouded in secrecy. 

Maybe this once suburbia loses out. He’s sure if he voiced the thought Donna would tell him in detail about the gaping void in his life left by him keeping even his found family at arm’s length or whatever, and that is a conversation he has absolutely no interest in having. Time for a change of subject. 

“You know, Pinciotti, it’s very sweet that you gave yourself my name. If this Forman thing doesn’t work out-”

“Keep talking and I'll hit you myself.”

She leaves within the half hour, splashing water on her tear-stained cheeks and flicking her hair back before she goes, and he can’t help but smile at her. Before she goes she leans over him to kiss him, careful, and he raises his brows at her silently as she withdraws.

“I’m sorry about your shades,” she says, all quiet and soft eyes, and then pats him on the cheek, just hard enough to make him wince. “When’s your birthday again?”

He flips her off as she leaves, but lazily, and then he lies on the couch wondering if he hallucinated the whole conversation on painkillers or something. 

He sort of thinks he’s gotten away scot-free with the whole ordeal now that he knows he wasn’t to blame for the slip-up, but karma really seems to have it in for him lately, because it’s barely a day later that Forman shows up to his room in the middle of the night unannounced.

It’s a good thing he has nerves of steel; he barely blinks at the guy as he barges in.

“No, please, be my guest.”

“Donna broke up with me,” Forman blurts, with an almost comically injured expression, his poor fragile heart in smithereens. Being into him is so much worse than being into Donna for Steven’s self-esteem.

Wait, shit. Donna.

“She what now?”

“She said-“ Forman stops, stares. “She said she loves me, but she needs some time to think, and it wouldn’t be fair to me if we kept dating while she did that.”

Fucking ace, Steven thinks. Clearly he gave the girl far too much credit in assuming she was going to be as level-headed as he is about this. 

“Is it you?” Forman is asking, snapping his focus back, big upset accusatory eyes and hands clenched by his sides. “Is she doing this because of you?”

Steven shuffles upwards a bit, shakes his head, kind of annoyed now. “No, man, seriously? I told you ages ago-“

“Laurie saw you kiss,” Forman interrupts, voice firm despite the betrayal radiating off him in waves, and damnit- _Laurie_ , of course it’s Laurie. He makes a mental note to ruin her life, then kicks his ass into gear. Shit. “You kissed yesterday and she broke up with me tonight and you’re telling me there’s no correlation between the two?”

“First of all, if you believe everything your harpy of a sister tells you, you’re an idiot,” Steven says, stalling for time. Why does the guy have to be such an open book of hurt? It’s embarrassing. “Second of all, it wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t like what?” Eric demands, and bless him, he really is trying to sound like he’s giving him the benefit of the doubt. Good old Forman and his charitable magnanimity. Steven swallows a spike of anger.

“Look, Forman, your girlfriend kissed _me_ , all right, I just sat there. And she didn’t kiss me because she _wanted_ me, she just-“ He hesitates for half a second. “Felt sorry for me.”

Eric stares at him hard, discomfort prickling at him (he really needs to find new glasses), and he half-expects him to call him a liar but he sags just a little bit, still frowning hard. “So she kissed you- and you didn’t say anything?”

“Oh, yeah, because you’re taking it so well,” Steven retorts, irked. “It didn’t mean anything, how many times do I have to say it?”

“Maybe not for you!” Eric exclaims, coming to a halt near him. “Girls don’t just kiss people who aren’t their boyfriends for no reason!”

“There was a reason, it just wasn’t _that_ reason,” Steven counters, aware that ‘feeling sorry for him’ is a terrible excuse, considering Donna, but it’s hardly like he can tell the guy they were bonding over their mutual perversion. “It was a- platonic kiss.”

“A platonic-“ Eric stops, veering into flat disbelief. “Are you kidding me, Hyde? Kisses are not platonic! Friends don’t kiss friends platonically!”

Steven winces a little, having maybe overestimated the extent to which Eric’s anguish would blind him to the incongruity of Steven going hippie. “Well, they can, seeing as she did.”

“If she did, it’s because it’s not platonic,” Eric fires back, scowling. “When Buddy kissed me the fact that we were friends didn’t make it _platonic_ , did it?”

Oh, for the love of- “Yeah, but the guy _liked_ you, and Pinciotti _doesn’t like me_.”

“Then why did she _kiss you_?” 

“Why don’t you ask _her_ that _?_ ”

“Because she won’t tell me and you’re lying to me and she must have feelings for you or else she wouldn’t have-“

What Steven does next, he blames entirely on sleep-deprivation, pain meds, and pure undiluted exasperation. 

It’s a second-long affair; Forman nearly falls on top of him with the strength of Steven yanking him none-too-gently forwards, and then yelps as he shoves him back, looking like he’s just been struck over the head. 

“You feeling it now, champ?” Steven bites, sardonic, as he wipes his mouth. Eric only gapes.

“Are- wha- you- _Hyde_!”

“Yeah, it wasn’t good for me either,” Steven mutters, and lies back down. “ _It didn’t mean anything_ , Forman.”

Eric continues to sputter in shock for a solid thirty seconds, then tapers off and slumps heavily onto the side of the cot. 

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“You forced my hand, man.”

Eric groans, buries his head in his hands. “So you really-“

“I don’t know why she broke up with you,” Steven replies, flatly. “But it had nothing to do with that kiss. And your sister’s a bitch.”

“Hear hear,” Eric mutters, and after a minute lifts his head to squint at him. “Sorry I barged in here like that.”

Steven rolls his eyes. “You always get hormonal when she dumps you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

For a moment Steven is strongly struck with memories of sleepovers past, and half expects Forman to regress into his childhood self and demand he make room for him in the cot, but of course even Forman has more sense than that, and instead after a minute or so he just sighs, sounding exhausted, and pushes himself upright.

“I hate this week so much.” 

“You and me both.”

Eric just shakes his head, lost in brooding, then glances at him, smiling faintly. “Although, you know- if that’s how you kissed that girl, no wonder she sent her brothers after-“

Steven hits him square in the face with his pillow. 

He dreams of Buddy again. This time they’re sat on a swing-set that’s too small for both of them. 

“Now we’re even,” Steven says. Buddy keeps swinging too high, and it’s making him nauseous. 

“You pushed him off,” Buddy responds, his face a blur as he glances down. “Why’d you do that for?”

He really thinks that’s the end of it, or of his part of it, anyways. Thankfully, madness-induced breakup aside, Donna does nothing further to clue anyone in to the story behind the ordeal, and though things are obviously tense and weird between her and Eric she’s so resolutely normal about it that it passes pretty quickly for the most part, the five of them back to basement sessions like always. A week later his bruises are fading and his nose has stopped swelling, and he thinks maybe this is just one of those episodic incidents of theirs, that they’re back to the status quo.

A week and a day from the incident, Jackie corners him in his room as the others head their separate ways.

“I found that girl,” Jackie starts, a propos of nothing, and Steven genuinely has no idea what she’s talking about for a second. “Southside. I tracked her brothers through the yearbook and then cornered her after school.”

He blinks, makes a face.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“Well, I wanted to know what the whole thing was about, obviously,” Jackie huffs, though she looks uncomfortable through the veneer, and he thinks- fuck. “It didn’t take her long to come clean. She cried all over my shirt.”

Shit. “So what’d she say, then?”

Jackie stares at him, hard, and then glances around like the walls have ears, clearing her throat. “You know what she said. She told me all about her friend Hyde.”

“Well, shit,” Steven says, pulse roaring distantly in his ears. He feels oddly removed. “You got me, Jackie.”

“It’s Donna, right?” Jackie says, lowly. At his expression she squirms, scoffs. “Oh, please. Her friend was a _girl_ , and then Donna dumps Eric, you really think I couldn’t put two and two together?”

“Listen, Jackie,” Steven says, leaning in urgently. This feels somehow worse than the alternative. “You can’t tell anyone about this, you hear me? Not a single soul. It’s not like that. Donna-“

“I’m not going to tell anyone!” Jackie protests, almost offended. “God, Steven, who do you take me for?”

“You’re telling me right now,” Steven points out, blandly. 

“Only because I know you know already! That’s why she kissed you, right?”

“Oh, for the love of- is there anyone Laurie _didn’t_ tell?”

“I just don’t get why you of all people would be her confidante in this,” Jackie continues, dubiously. “And it’s not like I think you’re the type, but I never really suspected Donna to be either, although in retrospect she is pretty butch-“

He lets his head thunk against the wall hard and she cuts herself off. “Just ask what you want to ask.”

“No, I-“ Jackie starts, and now she looks uncomfortable, staring at her feet. Steven snorts; she looks back up, crosses her arms. “Just- you’re not after Michael, are you?”

“Jesus,” Steven mutters. 

“I only ask because-“

“No, Jackie,” Steven snaps, tiredly, “I’m not into _Kelso_. I am also not interested in amoeba and freakishly tall toddlers. Hard for you to understand, I know.”

“Well, then,” Jackie says, and then looks rather at a loss, staring at him in belated shock. “Well.”

He doesn’t know what he expects her to do next, but it certainly isn’t to abruptly sit down next to him on the bed, staring at her knees. 

He thinks of asking her not to tell anyone, but what’s the point? She will or she won’t. He’s not going to change her mind. 

“Um,” Jackie says, after an eternity. “Are you- all right?”

He casts her a disbelieving stare, and she bristles. “Well, I imagine it’s- you know! Hard!”

“Jackie, I don’t know how to tell you how much we are never having this conversation.”

“Fine!”

“I’m surprised you’re even still here,” Steven says, next, sort of accidentally, because he’s thinking of that time he knocked out that guy who called her a bitch, and the fact that she maced those guys for him last week. “You don’t strike me as the tolerant kind.”

Jackie purses her lips. “I do think it’s gross. But, Steven-“ She pauses, turns to face him. “I find mostly everything you do gross, so this pretty much changes nothing for me, you know?”

Unthinkably, he finds himself fighting the urge to smile. He turns away before she can see it. “Sure.”

She pats him gingerly on the shoulder, and then he really does smile, amused. 

“So,” Jackie says, slowly. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go shopping with-“

“Ask Fez. And get out of my room.”

“Oh, fine.”

Another week passes; all of his bruises have vanished, and all he has left to show are the stitches on his brow and the bandaid on his nose, which an overzealous Kitty Forman insisted he keep wearing until she said otherwise. He tells Donna about Jackie, and she boggles at him in disbelief. Nothing else happens, despite his suspicious scrutiny of Jackie. He’s not sure when she got so smart, anyways. 

Eric and Red butt heads over something; Laurie is presumably involved. As a result the others are banned from visiting for the weekend (the week, officially, but knowing Eric and Red there’s no way it’ll last that long), to Eric’s dismay, considering his parents are out of town and he was planning to throw a party. Steven is characteristically apathetic about it- in all of the drama he’d forgotten about the party, so he’s not especially devastated about its cancellation.

“Take it this way, Forman,” he tells Eric, as the latter mopes dejectedly on the sofa: “Now we have a bunch of booze and weed and no one to share it with.”

“Yeah, like you won’t hog all of it anyways.”

“Cheers.”

They get to beer eventually, watching reruns on TV and exchanging lazy, habitual banter; he can’t see the screen properly through the chunky old sunglasses he's borrowed from either Red or Kitty. It doesn’t matter much- the punchlines are all so obvious he doesn’t really need to follow along. Alcohol makes Forman moody, though, Donna-related whining making a comeback as his sobriety dwindles, and the last thing Steven needs is more of that, so he cuts him off and lights a joint. He likes to indulge Forman in his whining sometimes for comedic value, but girlfriend woes are old news, and this particular breakup is not one he wants the guy to think too hard about.

So, instead, they lie draped over the couch passing the joint back and forth, Steven musing absently about the fact that Elvis Presley was a hack, Eric wondering if his dead grandmother is the one sporadically making the pipes leak above his bedroom, and he relaxes a little, for the first time in weeks, alone with Forman, because this is the sort of habitual shit their lives are made of, unaffected by girls and families and other nonsense.

“Laurie’s got a new boyfriend,” Eric says, at some point, à propos of nothing, which Steven would normally tune out completely, except he has a bone to pick with the she-witch, so-

“Is that right?”

“Some old guy, what else is new,” Eric sighs, long-suffering. “He has a motorbike. I think she drove over my foot on purpose.”

“When has Laurie ever harmed you by accident?” Steven asks, rhetorically. When Eric snorts and takes a long drag, he continues: “You know, I do respect her complete lack of empathy. I think she’s actually managed to go through life without once feeling anything for her fellow man.”

Forman groans. “This is so typical. Kelso lusts after my sister despite the fact that she’s a blood-thirsty monster, and you admire her for it. I need new friends.”

“Hey, look,” Steven placates, mellow, “I wouldn’t sleep with her, at least.”

“Really?” Eric asks, skeptic. “Why?”

“Common decency not enough for you?”

“For me, sure. For you, not so much.”

Steven laughs at that; Forman smirks a little. “Fuck off. Fine. I just wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction, man. She has Kelso by the balls. I don’t need that shit in my life.”

“Lone wolf,” Forman echoes, sarcastic. “No strings.”

“That’s right,” Steven nods, very happy to ignore the cries of _liar_ in his head. Smoking is so very enjoyable. He’s sure half the crises in the world would be resolved if adults could just chill out a little, hit a blunt once in a while. “And that, Forman, is why you have spent the past weeks moping like a girl, while I have been living my life unbothered by the fickle interest of women.”

“You’re so full of it,” Forman mutters, kicking at him, but it’s almost said warmly, and his leg is so lax that when Steven tugs at it in retribution he slides full-body, yelping cartoonishly as his head hits the arm of the sofa. His legs end up half in Steven’s face, ankle hitting him in the nose. 

“ _Motherfucker_ ,” Steven manages, half laughing at the sharp pain in his healing nose. He thinks it may be bleeding a little. Through the comfortable warmth of beer and pot this isn’t as upsetting as it could be, incredulity taking priority.

“Shit,” Eric fumbles, sitting upright, and he looks comically guilt-stricken until he sees Steven is laughing, expression morphing into conflicted drunken amusement. “Are you- sorry-“

“Tell me how you really feel, Forman,” Steven says, sardonic, erasing the last vestiges of guilt on his face. His nose is definitely bleeding. “I thought we were over this whole Donna thing.”

“Hyde,” Eric groans, reaching around for a tissue and finding nothing. “Would it kill you to drop the act once in a while?”

“It very well could,” Steven says, all seriousness, though his lips twitch at the shove he gets for that, Eric’s hand dropping in defeat as he eyes the drying blood. 

“God, I- doesn’t it feel like everything’s been such a mess lately? Like, way more than usual? Or just- like, we’re more of a mess than usual?”

“What, us?” Steven asks, raising a brow. “Nah, man. You, maybe.”

“You got fucking- messed up,” Eric protests, “And then you let my girlfriend kiss you!”

“I was a passive receptor in both those situations, Forman, y’know-“

“Okay, no, no,” Forman gesticulates, straightening a little, the leg that’s still half in Steven’s lap moving dangerously close to his face again. “You also laid one on me to prove a point, Hyde, so-“

“Aw, come on,” Steven groans, feeling something belatedly wary jolt in his stomach as he thinks about the fact they’re in here alone, and high-loose and drunk-stupid but not near intoxicated enough for Forman to forget any of it, and he doesn’t usually let anyone into his personal space so easily, shit. “That was a- successful- strategic move.”

Mercifully Forman seems distracted, squinting at his bloody nose, but Steven should maybe consider getting a damn grip sometime and make sure those walls of his haven’t undergone some kind of constructive catastrophe, because he is still not at all as detached and cool as he’d like to be when Forman gives him a very weird look and clears his throat hazily. 

“Hyde- why’d she kiss you? Really?”

He’s a little woozy, but his gaze is as perceptive as he ever gets, and Steven, mellowed and resigned, only toys with it a little before sighing. “Can’t tell you.”

Eric doesn’t react like he’s surprised the original story was a lie, only frowns at his knees, shakes his head. “Was it me?”

“Huh?”

“I just- was it things I didn’t- because I know she said it was about her, but with girls and stuff like that, it’s always about you, really, right? And so-“

Eric stops, runs a hand through his hair. He doesn’t do that much; he’s always careful with his stupid combed hairdo. “I don’t know. With Donna I always feel like it’s- like I’m always guessing, because she doesn’t tell me when…”

He stops again, and this time Steven is ready to interrupt the self-indulgent depressive spiral, but Forman beats him to it, reclaims the blunt. “She tells you, though. I guess she told you why.”

“It’s not like-“ Steven starts, careful, because he’s not sure, actually, which way to redirect this conversation. If he should. Forman doesn’t even seem mad at him, for once, just frustrated, and they don’t do this kind of honest emotional schtick often but they’re _friends_ , aren’t they, there _is_ precedent for him listening even when Eric’s whining involves him directly. “Look, it’s really a Donna thing. Not about you.”

“Okay,” Forman says, and something in his expression twists, a more gritty sort of misery than his usual dramatics, their eyes locking. “But- why can’t she talk to me about it, then? She _never_ \- the both of you, actually-“

“Woah, man,” Steven starts, alarmed by this twist, but Forman’s brows are furrowing hard, the pained thing in his face settling firmly. 

“I know, okay? I know I have- you know, a stable home, and my parents aren’t divorcing, and my mom’s not a prostitute, and I know I don’t understand it, but I- like, I would try, Hyde. It’s like you all think I- you always listen to my problems, and you think they’re _stupid_ , but you won’t let me even listen when yours _aren’t_.”

He interrupts himself only to take a too-long drag, coughing a little, and Steven is mid fight-or-flight, startled into staring. 

“Forman, you dolt, have you considered that maybe neither Donna or myself are even nearly so touchy feely as you are? Do you see me spilling my little heart out to anyone?”

“I know that,” Forman retorts, eyes glittering with frustration. “But you talk to each other. And she’s- she was- my girlfriend, and my best friend, damn it, you’re both my _best friends_ and you never tell me anything.”

It’s so stupidly offended that Steven snorts, somewhere between weirdly touched and angry. He’s rattled. He’s not thinking straight.

“Maybe we’re both smart enough to know you wouldn’t like what you heard.”

“So breaking up with me is the better alternative?” Forman exclaims, too moody to be aggressive, too righteous to be whiny. “Remember what happened last time you did the hiding thing and Red almost _kicked you out of the house?_ Are you seriously planning on- what, just keeping it all to yourselves until you eventually vanish into thin air once we go to college?”

“I’m not going to college,” Steven says, acerbic, because the irony of Forman whining about understanding when he knows damn well Steven can’t afford any further education is making him crabby. “What do you expect, man, for me to just- live in your basement forever like some kind of exotic pet to spice up the Forman household a little? Leech off Red into middle-age?”

“You’re _part of the fa_ -“

“God damnit, I’m _not_ ,” Steven snaps, and they’re so embarrassing, drunkenly shouting at each other on this shitty couch for no reason, this is why he never lets the guy drag him into his stupid emotional spiralling. “I am not part of your _family!_ I’m just some jackass your parents are good enough to tolerate for a couple of years because they feel sorry that their son’s friend’s only real parent is a crack-whore who couldn’t be fucked to look after him! How can you be so _naive_ , man?”

“My parents _care about you_ , you idiot,” Forman snaps right back, cheeks gone red and blotchy with emotion, blunt burnt almost right through as he shoves himself straight up. “Whether you like it or not-“

“Your parents are _decent folk_ ,” Steven retorts, “And they wouldn’t find me half so sweet if they knew anything about me, Forman, sensing a pattern here? You know how Red was when he found out about the smoking, how’d you think he’d feel if he knew any of the other shit, huh?”

Forman hesitates, ploughs right on. “You’re a good guy, Hyde, despite your best efforts to come off like a _massive dick_ -“

“Oh, nice-“

“So it wouldn’t _matter_ , in the end, all right? They got over Laurie being a complete home wrecking slag, they’ve even made peace with the fact that the Pinciottis are creepy swingers, there’s nothing you could do that’d make them decide they suddenly don’t want you around-“

Steven laughs, loud and bitter and disbelieving. “If you only fucking knew, Boy Wonder.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Forman demands, still on the brink of furious, something predictably worried in his tone. “What’s- is this about that fight again? Christ, did you really knock some girl up?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Steven grimaces, something ugly in his chest. “Yeah, that’s right, you know us low-life types, impregnating strangers right and left-“

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Eric starts, then sags, shoulders almost shaking with suppressed frustration. “Can’t you just _tell me_?”

Steven looks at him for a moment, the anger receding slowly, leaving only a sort of tired self-disgust, a tinge of familiar exasperation.

“Nope.”

“Hyde-“

“Despite how incredibly annoying you are, I like being friends with you, Forman. So no.”

Eric goes quiet then, stares at him silently; Steven curses himself for the sentimentality. His voice is low when he speaks again.

“It’s something really terrible, then.”

“Guess you could say that.”

Eric looks like he wants to say a million things, then he yelps, dropping the blunt. It’s burnt through; Steven reflexively crushes the embers with a pillow, glances at his fingers, red but hardly hurt. “Ow, fuck-“

“Dumbass.”

Eric regards him morosely, looks at the pillow, looks up. “Did you- hurt someone?”

He only sighs. “No.”

Eric nods, bites his lip. “…Yourself?”

“Jesus. No, not- no.”

“Is it illegal?”

Steven snorts. “In Wisconsin? Sure.”

He expects his vagueness to deter Forman, but for some reason something strange shifts in his countenance, and Steven gathers himself, moves upright to bolt if necessary, abrupt movement making him a little dizzy. Forman only blinks at him, swaying very softly, like he’s having an internal debate, then he swallows. 

Sitting upright poised to run has brought them closer together; Steven shifts backwards minutely, habitual. “Don’t tell me you’re about to throw up on me.”

“They weren’t wrong,” Forman mumbles, to himself, questioningly, and it’s so random Steven feels his blood freeze even as fear finally returns him some of his defences, brows raising sarcastically.

“Who, the voices in your-“

He doesn’t get further than that; Forman kisses him.

It takes him what feels like a full fucking minute to understand it. He just sits there like a statue, frozen, chest seizing, brain working at a mile per hour to explain the pressure on his mouth in some other way. Forman fell, or he’s hallucinating, or-

Someone (he has the horrible suspicion it’s him) makes a sort of punched out shocked noise, and Forman falls back, furiously blotchy, pupils huge with some ungodly mix of inebriation, terror, and bravado, the both of them staring at each other in blank shock. He opens and closes his mouth. 

“What the fuck was-“ His voice actually sort of cracks on it. Fuck. _Fuck._ It’s some kind of- he’s messing with him, he has to react in a way that- “Have you lost your _mind_ -“

“Sorry,” Eric blurts, too quick, but it’s not in the sort of abject horror Steven might have imagined, and it’s almost like- 

“What the fuck is going on,” Steven manages, flat with shot nerves, conjecturing, thinking unavoidably of _Buddy Morgan_ , because Eric looks plenty mortified but not in an existential sort of way, and that’s just… “Forman, if you don’t start talking I’m going to punch your lights out.”

He means it, and Forman flinches a little, very visibly on the fence, but then he gets this determined look Steven has only ever witnessed before Eric does something stupendously dumb and reckless, usually directed at _Donna_ , and the little fucker is kissing him again, hard this time, grabbing him by the shoulders so they’re very awkwardly facing each other, and this has to be some kind of bizarro nightmare-dream bullshit because his common sense just sort of flings its hands in the air and storms off, leaving him with absolutely no understanding of what game Forman is playing at here and nothing to distract him from the- from- 

Stupidly, _stupidly_ , he doesn’t push him off, because he’s spent a _decade_ vaguely obsessing about a fictionalised version of this exact thing happening, and Forman’s brand of idiocy is contagious sometimes despite his best efforts, and he’s only _human_. It’s the only shot he’ll ever get to tasting this warm heady comfortable _thing_ the Forman house exudes. He doesn’t push him off, and when Forman realises it his grip on his shirt tightens, and Steven gives up, gives in, grabs roughly at his face and kisses back hard.

It’s the most surreal thing he’s ever done, sitting on this couch kissing the daylights out of Eric Forman. It tastes like beer and weed and Kitty Forman’s baking; when Eric makes an impatient sound in the back of his throat he feels like he’s ten years old and hogging the swings, and it makes him feel off-kilter like he hasn’t felt in years, not since that guy with the motorbike. If he were someone else he thinks he might have been shaking a little. 

He’s kissed a lot of people in his life, so he’s aware distantly that this is not the best kiss he’s ever had, or even close- they’re both too uncoordinated, and they’re sitting really weirdly, and Eric’s nose keeps bumping his and making him wince, and also his insides are in knots with something akin to horror, but _still_. Eric’s hands are in his hair; Eric’s knee keeps nudging his; when he licks at his teeth Eric shudders full-body. 

The sound of someone opening the basement door filters through the static in his head, and it’s like a bucket of cold water to the head. They separate violently, Eric reeling back onto the side of the couch, Steven haphazardly kicking the beer bottles under the sofa, and it’s only as steps start to descend that he notices the smear of red under Eric’s nose, gesturing urgently at him to wipe it off. Eric does, blanching, and combs at his hair neurotically. Years of practice have them almost normal by the time Laurie saunters into sight.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Eric asks, voice only a little high-pitched. She raises a slow brow at him.

“Borrowing some cash.”

“I thought you were staying the night at a _friend’s_.”

“I am,” Laurie repeats, mockingly. “So I need some money.”

“And why, exactly, would I be interested in helping you with that, considering you cost me my party?”

Laurie pauses, smirks. “Because otherwise I’ll tell dad about the party you two ended up having here anyways.”

Forman blanches, but Steven’s made of tougher stuff; he raises a brow. “This look like a party to you?”

“Smells like one,” Laurie retorts, sweetly. Steven sends a prayer of thanks to a number of deities he doesn’t believe in. 

“God,” Eric mutters, managing to hide his relief behind genuine irritation. “Fine. But no more than ten- hey!”

Laurie sticks a twenty in her pocket, smiling charmingly like the shark she is, and waltzes back upstairs. A car honks in the driveway.

They sit in dead silence for what feels like an eternity. 

“So,” Forman starts, slowly. “That sure was a thing that happened.”

Steven feels a headache building, glances at him. There’s nothing but habitual Forman in it- sincere, anxious, sardonic. “Sure.”

“I,” Forman continues. “Okay, so- I wasn’t- sorry for jumping you. But you didn’t- oh, god.”

He sounds so dejected that Steven snorts. He still feels shell-shocked into denial. “Yeah, thanks for clearing that one up.”

“Shut up,” Forman mutters, then glances at him, cheeks flaring when their eyes meet. Steven resists the urge to clear his throat unnecessarily. “Hyde, I- I don’t really know where to start.”

Reluctantly, he licks his lips. “How long have you…” 

“What, this, or- you?”

“Whatever,” Steven side-steps, too close to cracking completely if he has to talk about it. “Whichever is simpler.”

“I don’t know,” Eric says, then, careful. “Not that long. I guess I- there was some stuff, but. Really only once I started hanging out with Buddy.”

Of fucking course.

“It wasn’t the kiss,” Eric continues, embarrassed. “It was just- you know, I sort of started hanging with him again after a while, and I guess it made me think about what I thought I knew about guys like him. And we kind of talked about stuff sometimes, and I guess I found him more relatable than I wanted to. To be honest I kind of freaked out about it. I’ve only really- you know, accepted it, or whatever, since a couple of months ago. But I wasn’t exactly planning on…” He gestures vaguely between them. 

“This is crazy,” Steven mutters, to himself. “Forman, I mean- you’re the picket fence boy.”

“Oh, yeah, because you really give off those vibes,” Eric retorts, caustic. “It’s not like I exactly expected it from you either.”

“How did,” Steven starts, cautious again. “How did you know, anyways?”

“Guessed,” Eric mumbles. “There’ve been a couple of times across the years that in retrospect- but really I only even started thinking about it this year, I guess. One time I saw you and Tommy Moffat coming back from the sports field together, and the only things I know about him are that he’s a piece of work and that he and Buddy have, y’know. And then other little stuff. Honestly it was probably wishful thinking.”

He finishes a little embarrassed, and Steven sits and digests this, doesn’t know how to feel. “So tonight-“

“The way you were talking about it,” Eric shrugs, picking at his socks. “Buddy always says that Wisconsin bit too. And then it all sort of just clicked. Donna knows, doesn’t she?”

He nods, slowly. Eric sucks in a breath. “Does she know about- is that why she-“

“No,” Steven says, but doesn’t elaborate. Not his place. “You should tell her, though. She’ll be fine with it.”

He says this with as little resentment as he can. God, they’re ridiculous. The lot of them. Forman and Pinciotti, the soulmate package. What are the odds, right? He’s gotten more out of this than he could have dreamed, so he can’t complain. 

“All right,” Eric says, slowly. They look at each other. Steven salutes him lazily. Unaffected. Unflappable. His frown deepens.

He doesn’t want to ask, but it comes out of him anyways. “What now, then?”

“I don’t know,” Eric says, fast, like he was waiting for him to ask. He doesn’t look like Steven had thought he might, in the aftermath. His gaze is oddly knowing. “I- this whole time, have you-“

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, flat. It doesn’t quite land.

“Right,” Eric mumbles. “Hyde, I- look, I don’t know what to do.”

“Can’t advise you out of this one, man,” Steven says, wry, resigned. He feels safe, walls up. “Don’t look so torn up about it, Forman. I’ve heard it from Donna too, remember.”

“I’m not doing-“ He shakes his head, makes a worked up sound. “I don’t want-“

“Don’t be stupid,” Steven replies, then, harsher than he means to be. “There’s only one option for you. You choose Pinciotti and you get everything. You choose- anything else, and you lose it all. This is real life, Forman, grow up.”

“There’s two options,” Forman retaliates, steady enough. “I’ve chosen one for the past decade of my life, and it’s gotten me here.”

“God,” Steven mutters, lifts his shades to stare him in the eye. “You want kids. You want a nice house like your parents. You want a pretty wife to come home to. You want to not be arrested or _beat bloody in an alleyway_. There is _only one option_.”

Forman winces at that, hard, and it doesn’t even feel good, because for a moment Steven can only think about how fucking bleak it is that when all of his wildest most suppressed fantasies come true the only choice he has is to tell the guy he’s lo-liked for his entire life to fuck off right back to his girlfriend and leave him alone. 

He’s so caught up in the sudden cavity in his chest that he barely registers Forman shifting to face him properly. 

“I’ve spent my whole life trying and failing to stick to a plan, man. Trying to kiss Donna. Trying to date Donna. Trying to get Donna to sleep with me. Proposing to Donna like a moron. Trying to do well and make people proud.” He exhales, hesitant. “And you know what always happens, Hyde? It goes horribly wrong, that’s what. It never ever works out the way I planned. Every time I try to be this- version of me I think I should be, I fuck things up. But when I just- do things, try to do them right, things work out. So- I don’t know. I know you’re right. You usually are. But I-“ He looks six, nine, twelve, fifteen, old. “If things were different, I’d have spent the last ten years failing equally miserably at impressing you and Donna. You know?”

“Things aren’t different,” Steven says. Rough. Why rough? His lungs hurt. He slides his shades back on. 

“I know,” Eric says. “I know. But we’re- I mean, we’re seventeen, Hyde. I’m not going to settle down until I’m- you know, at least like twenty-“

“Twenty?”

“Shut up, look- I just-“ He sighs, full-body. Steven feels a moment of agonising empathy for Donna, for all of the fucking sincere heartfelt monologues she must have endured over the years. “I want to. I know it’s not- long-term, it- but I want to. A lot. The kind of a lot you only get from- years. So, if we- if you-“

“You want to play pretend until you settle down,” Steven surmises, caustic, but he gets such a distressed look for it the bite fades a little. 

“ _No_ , you- no. It’s not pretending.” He struggles for words, visibly, looks at him. “If it’s all we can have, is what I’m saying. If it’s all we can have, then I’d rather have it than nothing. Right?”

It’s such a bad idea. He hates him a little for suggesting it, even, because some awful burning longing has settled between his ribs and it hadn’t been there before. Before he was clever enough never to let hope flourish there. But now there’s this, and even so the idea is equally terrible, dangerous, doomed. There’s no way this ends well. 

He needs to be smart about this, because Forman isn’t being. He needs to recognise that it’s not just about him, because he’s careless with himself a lot- it’s Forman too, Forman’s perfect parcel of happiness hanging in the balance. It’s just hard to think that way when Forman, for once, is displaying this excruciating blend of sentimentality and Steven’s own seize the day pragmatism; when Forman really means this shit, when he knows deep down he shouldn’t have even allowed the kiss but it was _better than nothing_.

What does the future look like that he’d been contemplating, anyways? Six months until summer, and then leaving, a blip on the Forman register? Never settling down, anyways. Now there’s this: three years, if he plays his cards well, and at least that much to hold onto, after, at least that between the two of them, down the line. Anchoring. He’d balk at the commitment but it’s too late for that, when he knows this house like the back of his hand, when he’d honest-to-god take a bullet for the guy’s mother, when he still remembers so vividly the unspeakable burden of gratitude sinking into him that first night on his cot in Forman’s bedroom.

Shit. _Shit._ “You’re drunk,” he tries. “It was just a kiss, man. Did you propose to Donna the first time she gave it up, or what?”

It gets him good, but he’s off his game, because Forman goes white but then clenches his jaw and moves in close to him. “You have to say yes or no, Hyde. Just- I’ll listen.”

It takes every ounce of willpower he has to say it, voice straining for apathy as something in him cracks a little. “Go back to Donna.”

There is one agonising beat of silence, and then: “Yes or no.”

He glares at him with every ounce of betrayed rage he feels; for a moment he could hurt him. “ _Fuck_ you, man, why are you putting this on me like I want to make your choice for you-“

“Hyde,” Eric cuts in, somewhere between pleading and resolute, and Steven gives up. Kisses him, on the wrong side of desperate, because it’s better than putting it into words, at least, than saying it out loud, than surrendering that completely. 

It lasts forever, ten years of frustration poured into it; Forman wrenches back looking the exact same as he had in the fourth grade when he’d gotten a concussion and Steven and Donna had had to drag him all the way to the nurse’s office, eyes gone wide and glazed, dizzy-looking. Steven being Steven, he guesses what he’s about to say before he can quite get there, the absolute brainless bastard. 

“Y-“

“Yeah, yes, all right,” Steven grits out, quick, sealing his doom, and resolutely doesn’t look at whatever expression blooms out of his agreement as he moves back in. 

He is entirely unable to remember almost anything about the rest of the weekend. It all morphs together in a sort of hysterical haze. When the Formans return on Sunday night they seem blatantly surprised to find the house still standing, and no sign of a party; Steven spends the entire dinner making casual small talk with Kitty and feeling like at any moment one of them is going to bolt out of their chair and point an accusing, trembling finger at him, shriek “I know what you’ve done to our poor angel!” and kick him out on the street. It must show on his face, or if not on Eric’s, who is jumpy and weird the entire dinner, until Steven starts kicking him under the table, hard. He starts kicking back. It is as good a pastime as it was when they were six. 

They spend the week acting very oddly around one another. Steven is very good at keeping things under wraps, and Eric is surprisingly good at making his various secret anxieties seem like part of his normal neuroticism, but they’re both paranoid enough that they barely spend any time alone. It’s typically nonsensical of them to have done this whole long-term drama without having so much as mentioned what exactly their mutually unspoken feelings are; brief lapse into insanity having passed, Steven is keeping that under heavy lock.

It’s Friday night when he hears Eric padding towards his room near eleven; by the time he’s sitting up Eric has made his way in and sat himself at the end of his bed, tugging at the covers so he can shove his freezing feet under them. Steven pulls a face at him.

“Hi.”

“I’ve missed you too, sweetie, how long’s it been, an hour?”

Eric shoves at him, rolling his eyes. “Shut up, Hyde. I just wanted to check in.”

“Again, an hour.”

“You know what I mean, jackass,” Eric says. His long-suffering look fades an iota when their eyes meet. “Hey, listen-“

“Foreboding words.”

Eric actually kicks him; it’s feeble as always, but he relents. “Can I maybe finish a damn sentence without the wisecracks? Is that so much to ask?”

He mimes zipping his lips. Eric sighs.

“Ok, so. Can we just- agree that no matter what happens, we’ll stay friends?”

“Forman,” Steven says, nauseous with disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m serious,” Forman flushes, embarrassed but dead-set. “Like, whenever we inevitably get into some big dumb fight, I need you to remember me making an ass out of myself right now, okay?”

“Couldn’t forget that if I tried to,” Steven snorts, except it’s a little truer than he’d like. Funny that Forman actually thinks he could forget that. Funny that Forman imagines he won’t inevitably be the one to cut the cord. 

“Fine,” Forman says, and doesn’t press it, just sits there consideringly. After a beat he smiles at him, vague, something faintly amused in his gaze. Steven gives him half a smile back. Why not, right? They’re usually the ones rolling their eyes at the group’s absurdity; figures they still do it when the absurdity is their own.

Forman shifts his now-warmer feet against his knee, comfortable, and he has to fight a stupid shiver at it. He doesn’t know why it gets to him, the casual stuff. It’s the overlay, he thinks, rewriting age-old memories with new realities. Makes his heart throb.

They sit in companionable silence a moment or two; Eric mentions the newest development in Jackie and Kelso’s trainwreck of a relationship, and they agree judiciously that those two really should just break up and get it over with. It’s so familiar it lulls him into an almost uncomfortable sense of safety. 

Eventually Forman yawns, shifts, leans to rest his forehead on Steven’s knees, stays there a moment, clearly toying with saying something. Steven briefly succumbs to temptation and brushes a hand through his hair, messing it up; he withdraws it immediately, just in case it seems like he’s being sappy or something. 

“Go to bed, man. I need my legs.”

“Here I thought I was a scrawny loser who weighed about the same as a two-year-old.” 

“You are a scrawny loser who weighs about the same as a two-year-old. I wouldn’t want a two-year-old sleeping on me either.”

Eric snorts, straightens. He’s so predictable; Steven can read clear as day the tiny cautious prickles of longing on his face, like he’s thinking that if Steven was Donna he might have just slept like that, curled up on the shitty cot like kids. 

“Whatever, man. See you tomorrow. Don’t skip first period if you want a ride.”

“Right, see you at lunch.”

He gets a head-shake for his efforts; Eric slides off, stops by the door, hesitates. 

“I’m really glad you got zoned to my school, y’know.”

Steven groans; Forman laughs, vanishes up the stairs. How does Donna stand it?

He wanders upstairs about fifteen minutes later, thirsty and seeking milk, and finds Kitty Forman drinking coffee alone in the dark at the kitchen table. It makes him pause in the doorframe, which makes her turn towards him in surprise.

“Oh, Steven.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Forman. Just thirsty.”

She only nods, waves at the fridge. Only once he’s poured himself a glass does she gesture him over. 

He sits, waits obediently for her to examine his face. To date her touching him makes his breathing slow a little. 

“You’re all healed,” Kitty decides, satisfied, and smiles vaguely at him. “Good job following the doctor’s instructions.”

“I had a great nurse,” Steven shoots back, raising his brows. It makes her laugh, albeit a little distractedly; he sips his milk in silence as her expression goes contemplative again. They never properly spoke about what happened; he knows she didn’t buy his story.

After a long moment, Kitty sighs, sounding drained. It almost startles him with its abruptness.

“All right, Mrs. Forman?”

“I just worry about you kids sometimes,” Kitty says, shaking her head. “There’s so much- the world is so harsh.”

It prickles at him. “Hey, I ain’t complaining. World’s been pretty good to me lately.”

She tuts at him fondly, finally seeming to focus on the conversation. “That’s very sweet. I suppose at least you can look out for yourselves.”

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” Steven replies, with a pointed look towards Eric’s room. “But I wouldn’t worry about me too much.”

“Someone has to,” Kitty says, sighing, and pats his hand. “You know, Steven- there’s a lot of things about the world nowadays I don’t really understand. I guess I’m getting older, because I often think things were better our way. But then again a lot of things were pretty terrible back in the day, so I guess you kids must be doing something right, huh?”

He’s not sure where this is going, nods slowly, casual. “Sure.”

“Some days I look at you kids and I ask myself where I went wrong,” Kitty continues, quiet, the blood in his veins turning to ice. “I mean, Laurie’s a lost cause, and Eric’s always finding some new way to give his father a heart attack, and you’re always keeping secrets I’d rather not think about.” 

For an endless moment neither of them speaks.

He runs a mental tally of how many of his things he can fit in his school bag. More than he came with, anyways. He’s calm, thinking it through- it comes with a certain sense of inevitability, less than a shock than it might have been.

“Most days, though,” Kitty says, and she’s firm, now, as Steven stares at his glass, calculating. “I tell myself that’s a rather silly thing to think. Laurie may be a heartless harpy, but she looks after herself just fine, and as for you boys, you’ve both grown up into bright upstanding young men.” 

He can’t help himself; he stares, trying to understand the joke. Her knowing, understanding look skewers him. 

“I won’t deny the parameters have changed a little since Red and I were young,” Kitty concludes, meaningful. “But a good kid is a good kid, and I’m very lucky to have two under my roof.” 

Steven clears his throat once, twice. He feels horribly exposed. His face is hot, and his nose is prickling, but he swears he’s not sick, so- 

“Think you’re giving me too much credit, Mrs Forman,” is what comes out, hoarsely, as he grips his glass tight enough to shatter. 

“Just enough,” Kitty dissuades, hand back on his, and to his uncomprehending dismay his throat only tightens further. 

He sits very still and takes slow, calculated breaths. It’s been so long since the last time he cried that his body has entirely forgotten how to process it. He’s not crying, though; can’t do it. His eyes are prickling wetly, but he doesn’t let it spill. Even when Kitty stands up to give him a hug, smelling of soap and coffee and _mom_ , and Steven’s breathing gets uneven. 

He catches a glimpse of her pained expression when he finally pulls himself off her, the torn bone-deep worry in her gaze, and feels a wave of bitter self-loathing, for being the parasite living under her son’s bed and making her lose sleep over the dark path lying ahead of them if he lets things play out the way he desperately wants to. It’s gone in a second, though, fond reassurance in her eyes as she pushes his hair back, and he pulls himself together, offers her a wry smile. 

“We really should do something about your hair.”

“Respectfully, Mrs Forman, a man has the prerogative to do what he likes with his own hair,” Steven dodges, picking up their glasses. “You’ve had your way with Eric’s long enough.”

“Oh, he’d cut it the exact same even if I let him be,” Kitty dismisses, dryly; Steven snorts, puts the glasses in the sink and turns the tap. “I suppose I should be grateful none of you have ever followed the current trends too closely.”

“I could never be one of the sheep,” Steven agrees, gravely. The older woman only rolls her eyes.

“You go to sleep, now. You have class first thing in the morning.”

Class which he is absolutely not attending at such an ungodly time, but then they both know that. It’s fair compromise for his all B and C report card. He nods at her, drying his hands.

“Good night, Mrs Forman.”

“Good night, Steven.”

Unsurprisingly, he sleeps like a rock.

**Author's Note:**

> groovy
> 
> this was left ambiguous because i wanted the bookends of kitty and hyde more than i wanted resolution of all plot-threads, but i would assume hyde/eric/donna figure something out between the three of them. also, referring to hyde as steven the whole way through was trippy as fuck.
> 
> r&r appreciated :)


End file.
